“Nobody objects to the right to withhold oneâs labour”.
Actually, I do. I do not accept that this is an absolute right without any corresponding responsibilities.
If you are a professional and have signed an employment contract to deliver services in return for a salary, then you have accepted responsiblity to deliver those services to the terms of the contract. You also have responsibilities to customers and co-workers.
Of course, if you don’t care about professionalism and taking your responsibilities seriously, that need not concern you.
In my view, it is extremely unwise for professionals like doctors to strike since it fundamentally undermines the professional ethos expected from them. Reputations take years to build and moments to destroy.
Having said all that, I can imagine that in practice it’s not an easy decision for teachers – for example – whether to strike.
But the fundamental reason they lack any negotatiating power is that they still insist on being treated as a mass and not as individuals as in private industry. If they accepted regional/local pay based on individual performance without things like automatic progression pay every year (this apparently still exists in the NHS), then a lot of the problems would go away. Except for the fact that lower performing employees would be paid less.
Since the public sector unions still insist that lower performing employees must be paid the same as higher performers and that they cannot be fired (drunk on the job train drivers seem impossible to dismiss), I suggest that the unions as they currently exist are archaic.
How would you judge the annual individual pay for a doctor or nurse if you moved away from national pay scales? What metrics, what system, how much time and energy would you spend on this? How many disputes would arise about unfairness etc etc? Junior doctors rotate through their placements and organisations. So we resetting what we pay them every few months? Massive bureaucratic task.
Your point has some theoretical interest, but massively impractical even if we like a bit of the principle.
Bear in mind also GP are private contractors – there is something though in the mechanism via which they are paid. Debate for another time perhaps
Match the private sector rate of award in arguably equivalent areas given the educational and deferred gratification commitment needed to become a doctor – so Banking industry not a bad comparator. 1-2 year deal initially with commitment to inflation matching going forward.
More fundamentally rapid increase in training places to tackle demand-supply imbalance coupled with student debt alleviation once X years NHS service complete- point being we are losing Docs regularly to Aus, Canada, Middle East etc
This actually doesnât cost as much as we think because we are paying silly agency rates but nonetheless weâve some fiscal headroom given energy costs been lower than expected and interest rates not quite as high as feared. So a choice that can be made.
In order to avoid the âsweeping generalisationsâ you chastised me for earlier, the crucial difference is that Bankers* MAKE money, Doctors donât.
Additionally the Public Sector Worker is virtually unsackable and in receipt of magnificent index linked pensions. Thus how is reform even possible?
(* Known to my generation as Money Lenders and they worked in Counting Houses not Banks.)
I would imagine that about 20% of government employees are on long-term sick leave with âmental problemsâ. Nobody can do anything. As you say, they are unsackable.
And with big fat pensions at the end what is there to complain about? The real battle to survive is in the private sector in which the wealth of the country depends. The public sector has grown far too fat.
And with big fat pensions at the end what is there to complain about? The real battle to survive is in the private sector in which the wealth of the country depends. The public sector has grown far too fat.
He begins his post with âI would imagineâ and then proceeds to refer to âmental problemsâ like a caricature of a spittle-flecked, swivel-eyed loon, and you expect me to take what he says seriously?
There used to be a person in every group of (un)civil servants whose job it was to remind members of the group that unless they took their “sick leave” by a certain date they would loose it. At that time (60s) I believe the going rate was 6 weeks per year. presume HR/Union rep now fulfills that function.
He is near the truth. I have heard all this which was happening 30 years ago as well. I forgot all about it until it was brought up. They have it very cushy.
He is near the truth. I have heard all this which was happening 30 years ago as well. I forgot all about it until it was brought up. They have it very cushy.
Yeah. It used to be fifteen days but many of them use it for extra holiday and not taking it off shows the others up so there is pressure to take it as well as holidays.
Yeah. It used to be fifteen days but many of them use it for extra holiday and not taking it off shows the others up so there is pressure to take it as well as holidays.
There used to be a person in every group of (un)civil servants whose job it was to remind members of the group that unless they took their “sick leave” by a certain date they would loose it. At that time (60s) I believe the going rate was 6 weeks per year. presume HR/Union rep now fulfills that function.
They are off sick as they have so many weeks sick leave to use if they are sick but of course many take it off anyway as they don’t need to make a profit. That’s the private sectors job.
He begins his post with âI would imagineâ and then proceeds to refer to âmental problemsâ like a caricature of a spittle-flecked, swivel-eyed loon, and you expect me to take what he says seriously?
They are off sick as they have so many weeks sick leave to use if they are sick but of course many take it off anyway as they don’t need to make a profit. That’s the private sectors job.
I would challenge that as a former HR manager and a Full Time Trade Union officer, they are frustrating their contract, âFrustration of contractâ is a legal concept. It refers to an event which: (1) wasnât reasonably foreseeable at the point the contract was formed; (2) isnât under the direct control of either party; and (3) makes any further performance of the contract, as it was originally intended to operate, impossible. Where these three factors exist together, a contract can be lawfully terminated. In the employment context, this means there would be no actual dismissal, i.e. there wouldnât be an event to pin an unfair dismissal claim on.Whether the cause be organic Cancer, etc, or non organic (all in the mind”. Ergo fair dimissal is an option, it requires the will of the omployer.
I used to work with a rehab company that also had public sector clients. They used to roll their eyes when the public sector cropped up in conversation. If someone did not want to go back to work there was little that could be done to make them and their employment was rarely, if ever, terminated
I used to work with a rehab company that also had public sector clients. They used to roll their eyes when the public sector cropped up in conversation. If someone did not want to go back to work there was little that could be done to make them and their employment was rarely, if ever, terminated
They are given so many weeks sick leave in addition to holidays and a large number take their sick leave as an entitlement without being sick. They live in the cradle to grave culture risk free.
Given the excellent terms and conditions enjoyed from the cleaner up (never factored into wage comparisons thrown around by unions representing the public sector) itâs a no brainier for the cunning to take advantage of, for example, the generous sick leave and other âperksââŠ..
This is not a fact. I ve worked all over public sector. We get v concerned if its over 5%. I work with lots of contractors, who have similar rates. Performance management has radically changed over the last 15 years.
I would challenge that as a former HR manager and a Full Time Trade Union officer, they are frustrating their contract, âFrustration of contractâ is a legal concept. It refers to an event which: (1) wasnât reasonably foreseeable at the point the contract was formed; (2) isnât under the direct control of either party; and (3) makes any further performance of the contract, as it was originally intended to operate, impossible. Where these three factors exist together, a contract can be lawfully terminated. In the employment context, this means there would be no actual dismissal, i.e. there wouldnât be an event to pin an unfair dismissal claim on.Whether the cause be organic Cancer, etc, or non organic (all in the mind”. Ergo fair dimissal is an option, it requires the will of the omployer.
They are given so many weeks sick leave in addition to holidays and a large number take their sick leave as an entitlement without being sick. They live in the cradle to grave culture risk free.
Given the excellent terms and conditions enjoyed from the cleaner up (never factored into wage comparisons thrown around by unions representing the public sector) itâs a no brainier for the cunning to take advantage of, for example, the generous sick leave and other âperksââŠ..
This is not a fact. I ve worked all over public sector. We get v concerned if its over 5%. I work with lots of contractors, who have similar rates. Performance management has radically changed over the last 15 years.
Don’t bankers do loans and pensions and insurance and all the money things we need though too?
Not saying they did a good job. Things just blow up all over the place at the moment, but all systems and businesses have risks.
I agree, they create no wealth except for themselves. I was recently surprised to discover that banks literally create money when a mortgage debt is incurred. The mortgage deed that is signed is the credit thatâs created, which they then lend back to you at compound interest for 25 years.
Don’t bankers do loans and pensions and insurance and all the money things we need though too?
Not saying they did a good job. Things just blow up all over the place at the moment, but all systems and businesses have risks.
I agree, they create no wealth except for themselves. I was recently surprised to discover that banks literally create money when a mortgage debt is incurred. The mortgage deed that is signed is the credit thatâs created, which they then lend back to you at compound interest for 25 years.
Pensions in the Public Sector are four times greater comparitively than the private sector and are safe with no risk through our taxes. All public sectors workers have that benefit. Yes banks make money like all industry in the private sector where their taxes support the public sector. They call it public sector gold plated pensions I believe thoroughly protected by the government.
Bankers make money? To a point, they want alot in return. How is wealth created, is one of the key questions for these strikes. Who keeps citizens well, educated, keeps us safe, runs whats left of our civic society.
The people who now enter these professions(where there is no bonus related pay), hock themselves into min. 50 to 70k debt for the privilege. That’s why you have strikes along with over 9% inflation for 2 years running.
I would imagine that about 20% of government employees are on long-term sick leave with âmental problemsâ. Nobody can do anything. As you say, they are unsackable.
Pensions in the Public Sector are four times greater comparitively than the private sector and are safe with no risk through our taxes. All public sectors workers have that benefit. Yes banks make money like all industry in the private sector where their taxes support the public sector. They call it public sector gold plated pensions I believe thoroughly protected by the government.
Bankers make money? To a point, they want alot in return. How is wealth created, is one of the key questions for these strikes. Who keeps citizens well, educated, keeps us safe, runs whats left of our civic society.
The people who now enter these professions(where there is no bonus related pay), hock themselves into min. 50 to 70k debt for the privilege. That’s why you have strikes along with over 9% inflation for 2 years running.
I have a problem with this idea of ânegotiationâ. If A wants a pay rise because A feels poor at the moment and A earns ÂŁ30,000pa but B earns ÂŁ40,000 and still wants a pay rise – are you allowed to talk about pensions?
I worked in the private sector and earned more money than in the public sector but with a minimal pension. In theory, I should have saved for the future whilst those in the public sector didnât have to save because they could look forward to a fabulous pension.
Today, the public sector unions argue that their pension canât even be considered in pay negotiations.
Wrong. Your pension is inflated by an equal payment from the employer. You pay ÂŁ1 and your employer pays ÂŁ1. That is a perk. Both sets of contributions are tax free and that is another perk. If you retire, your pension is underwritten by the government – another perk.
You have obviously been receiving these perks without understanding what they mean. You could work for a private employer who does not offer such a system. Then you have to choose your own way of getting a pension but this will depend on movements of stocks and shares – you could lose it all.
Or you could have a reasonable pension but the contributors stop contributing. Your pension reduces or can, in theory, go to nothing.
The government-backed pension is such a perk that it is obscene. But those that have it say the same, you have to pay so it is not free.
Chris, whatever happened to “Workplace” pensions which, I understand, had to be offered to an employee within a short (specified) time after starting work? PS I retired (as an employer) just before they were introduced. Question open to all especially those with special knowledge. ex HR?
Chris, whatever happened to “Workplace” pensions which, I understand, had to be offered to an employee within a short (specified) time after starting work? PS I retired (as an employer) just before they were introduced. Question open to all especially those with special knowledge. ex HR?
The GPs you deride pay 22% of their income (both the employer and employee contributions) for their lovely pension.
Few who pay such a large proportion of their salary over, say, 30 years, would not end up with a decent pension.
The GPs you deride pay 22% of their income (both the employer and employee contributions) for their lovely pension.
Few who pay such a large proportion of their salary over, say, 30 years, would not end up with a decent pension.
Wrong. Your pension is inflated by an equal payment from the employer. You pay ÂŁ1 and your employer pays ÂŁ1. That is a perk. Both sets of contributions are tax free and that is another perk. If you retire, your pension is underwritten by the government – another perk.
You have obviously been receiving these perks without understanding what they mean. You could work for a private employer who does not offer such a system. Then you have to choose your own way of getting a pension but this will depend on movements of stocks and shares – you could lose it all.
Or you could have a reasonable pension but the contributors stop contributing. Your pension reduces or can, in theory, go to nothing.
The government-backed pension is such a perk that it is obscene. But those that have it say the same, you have to pay so it is not free.
Public sector pensions are a shadow of what they once were. You wonât find anybody who started in the public sector within the last 20 years on a final salary scheme anymore
Public sector pensions are a shadow of what they once were. You wonât find anybody who started in the public sector within the last 20 years on a final salary scheme anymore
Agency rates include the the total cost of employment otherwise paid by the employer, often up to an additional 20% (like NICS, pensions, bonuses, expenses, holiday and sick pay, insurances and recruitment costs). Agency staff pay has to cover holidays, sickness, their pensions and travel expenses.
In order to avoid the âsweeping generalisationsâ you chastised me for earlier, the crucial difference is that Bankers* MAKE money, Doctors donât.
Additionally the Public Sector Worker is virtually unsackable and in receipt of magnificent index linked pensions. Thus how is reform even possible?
(* Known to my generation as Money Lenders and they worked in Counting Houses not Banks.)
I have a problem with this idea of ânegotiationâ. If A wants a pay rise because A feels poor at the moment and A earns ÂŁ30,000pa but B earns ÂŁ40,000 and still wants a pay rise – are you allowed to talk about pensions?
I worked in the private sector and earned more money than in the public sector but with a minimal pension. In theory, I should have saved for the future whilst those in the public sector didnât have to save because they could look forward to a fabulous pension.
Today, the public sector unions argue that their pension canât even be considered in pay negotiations.
Agency rates include the the total cost of employment otherwise paid by the employer, often up to an additional 20% (like NICS, pensions, bonuses, expenses, holiday and sick pay, insurances and recruitment costs). Agency staff pay has to cover holidays, sickness, their pensions and travel expenses.
Match the private sector rate of award in arguably equivalent areas given the educational and deferred gratification commitment needed to become a doctor – so Banking industry not a bad comparator. 1-2 year deal initially with commitment to inflation matching going forward.
More fundamentally rapid increase in training places to tackle demand-supply imbalance coupled with student debt alleviation once X years NHS service complete- point being we are losing Docs regularly to Aus, Canada, Middle East etc
This actually doesnât cost as much as we think because we are paying silly agency rates but nonetheless weâve some fiscal headroom given energy costs been lower than expected and interest rates not quite as high as feared. So a choice that can be made.
I accept there are practical challenges here.
On the other hand, we’ve lived for at least five decades with a healthcare system in which junior doctors are massively overworked – I recall reports of 80 hour weeks being worked in the past – and there has been little serious effort made to rectify this. Quite how having overworked and tired doctors is safe for patients (and the doctors themselves) has always eluded me.
The fact that such things persist tells me the current system is poorly managed and structured and that something needs to change. As does the absurd cap on doctors training and persistent need to import labour. We need to recognise these things as the bugs that they are and not simply features.
I’m not going to attempt to work out how pay should be managed in the NHS. It’s not easy. But there are enough people employed already to do this. Probably too many.
I might observe here that there’s a massive bureaucracy already on hand to deal with the massive bureaucratic task ! But in my experience, massive bureaucracies create at least as many problems as they solve.
On “fairness” (a term which is never defined by those who use it), there is nothing particularly fair in my book about paying a large group of people the same regardless of their actual contribution.
My daughter is a recently qualified doctor here in the UK, and has been very well trained as part of her medical training in the importance of not being overworked. All good, no-one wants to be faced with a doctor who is too tired to make a proper diagnosis or treatment decision. The upshot is that the workload that and I and her brother (both solicitors) think is entirely normal, she would think is intolerable.
Very pleased to hear that. And please don’t read my comments as being anti-doctor – that’s not really my intent.
I also hope that the absurd pension lifetime allowance gets raised tomorrow. For everyone – not just the doctors. But one of the most stupid and short-sighted policy errors of recent years to actively encourage doctors to retire early when we don’t have enough and many wish to continue working. No one should have to pay more than 50% effective (or marginal rate) income tax. Certainly no doctor.
Very pleased to hear that. And please don’t read my comments as being anti-doctor – that’s not really my intent.
I also hope that the absurd pension lifetime allowance gets raised tomorrow. For everyone – not just the doctors. But one of the most stupid and short-sighted policy errors of recent years to actively encourage doctors to retire early when we don’t have enough and many wish to continue working. No one should have to pay more than 50% effective (or marginal rate) income tax. Certainly no doctor.
My daughter is a recently qualified doctor here in the UK, and has been very well trained as part of her medical training in the importance of not being overworked. All good, no-one wants to be faced with a doctor who is too tired to make a proper diagnosis or treatment decision. The upshot is that the workload that and I and her brother (both solicitors) think is entirely normal, she would think is intolerable.
Large organisations do this all the time. If you want answers to your questions, take the time look at how they do this. That would be better than asking others to explain it to you
I think large organisations are very much part of the problem. If, for example, each hospital was its own employer /business then it would set its own pay scales to match its area, demand etc. If the staff at another hospital were unhappy with their pay they could change jobs, employer, strike etc.
The problem basically is rigid inflexible pay and employment conditions due to national scales, employers etc. And organisations being too big to fail.
Smaller is almost always, in the medium to long term, better even if sometimes less efficient on the surface.
Itâs tricky finding right balance for sure.
What public wouldnât easily accept is the impact of more wage rate local freedom as some places would win and others lose meaning hospitals would close. Furthermore we need to close the demand-supply gap a bit more first or wages just go one way.
Itâs tricky finding right balance for sure.
What public wouldnât easily accept is the impact of more wage rate local freedom as some places would win and others lose meaning hospitals would close. Furthermore we need to close the demand-supply gap a bit more first or wages just go one way.
I think large organisations are very much part of the problem. If, for example, each hospital was its own employer /business then it would set its own pay scales to match its area, demand etc. If the staff at another hospital were unhappy with their pay they could change jobs, employer, strike etc.
The problem basically is rigid inflexible pay and employment conditions due to national scales, employers etc. And organisations being too big to fail.
Smaller is almost always, in the medium to long term, better even if sometimes less efficient on the surface.
Well, that’s an easy one. De-nationalise health industry and let the market (i.e. me and you and the doctors) sort out what their actual value is. What value they add.
Decide what their value is? How much money would you put towards trying to save yours or a family member’s life if they had something life-threatening? Priceless is how much their value is. And who will decide how much that comes to in monetery terms? The richest of us.
I live in the Netherlands (supposedly a shining beacon of state-supported private healthcare) and have already been advised to call an uber instead of an ambulance in case of an emergency to avoid the 800 euro ‘eigen risico’ costs that would be incurred if I called one.
Decide what their value is? How much money would you put towards trying to save yours or a family member’s life if they had something life-threatening? Priceless is how much their value is. And who will decide how much that comes to in monetery terms? The richest of us.
I live in the Netherlands (supposedly a shining beacon of state-supported private healthcare) and have already been advised to call an uber instead of an ambulance in case of an emergency to avoid the 800 euro ‘eigen risico’ costs that would be incurred if I called one.
The Doctors problem is having a monopoly employer the NHS. If they were self employed like real professionals – or Doctors in Europe -they would be paid the market rate.
GPs are the ultimate rent-seekers. They get paid for having us on their books whether they treat us or not. That’s why my GP (who works part-time) is ‘unable’ to provide an appointment within the next fortnight and can’t book one after that because ‘computer says no’.
‘Stuff their mouths with gold’, said Nye Bevan. ‘And every other orifice too!’, said Tony Blair, and proceeded to do just that.
The NHS is a sacred cow it needs putting down.It is also the means NOT the end, the end was health care free at the point of delivery AND it can’t even manage that.
As my 90 year old uncle observed during lockdown. We fought for an NHS to save us, not for us to save it
Hancock destroyed much of the hysteria around the NHS masks etc. Perhaps not forcing staff out if they refused the vaccines might have helped – then given the NHS IC beds were offered to the French was there ever an NHS overwhelmed crisis? Not according to some family members who actually worked there during the pandemic
The best one can say about the NHS is the outsourcing bits work well, what’s left may just pass muster as an Emergency service
Here’s a start – a close family member, a senior surgeon, only found out that he’d been working 1.5x the average, in his dept, for the same salary, once he became director of surgery & so had access to the numbers. For years the managers had been too weak to sort this out, and just allowed the lazy ones to get away with it – at direct cost to the hard workers. This is entirely typical of NHS ‘management’.
I am not sure if junior doctors are private contractors. They are still under training but when they have finished training they will be into quite big money. In line with the proverbial song “I want it now” in Charlies Chocolate Factory it appears very selfish to me.
Who need to “judge” it? Junior doctors are hot-footing it to Australia and Canada as soon as they can for the money. And good luck to them. This will keep happening until junior doctors gst pad more here. When the employer decides he’s had enough of losing his valuable employees, he’ll pay them more. Sorted; no “judgement” required.
But don’t worry. You just sit there and spend hours mulling over the complicated judgment you think is required.
How would you judge pay for an individual? The same way as everyone else does it across many industries – based on individual performance. It’s the norm: but you make it sound like it’s unmanageable.
There is nothing so unfair as the equal treatment of people with unequal capabilities. Treating a mass of people as one guarantees the lowest performance possible.
I accept there are practical challenges here.
On the other hand, we’ve lived for at least five decades with a healthcare system in which junior doctors are massively overworked – I recall reports of 80 hour weeks being worked in the past – and there has been little serious effort made to rectify this. Quite how having overworked and tired doctors is safe for patients (and the doctors themselves) has always eluded me.
The fact that such things persist tells me the current system is poorly managed and structured and that something needs to change. As does the absurd cap on doctors training and persistent need to import labour. We need to recognise these things as the bugs that they are and not simply features.
I’m not going to attempt to work out how pay should be managed in the NHS. It’s not easy. But there are enough people employed already to do this. Probably too many.
I might observe here that there’s a massive bureaucracy already on hand to deal with the massive bureaucratic task ! But in my experience, massive bureaucracies create at least as many problems as they solve.
On “fairness” (a term which is never defined by those who use it), there is nothing particularly fair in my book about paying a large group of people the same regardless of their actual contribution.
Large organisations do this all the time. If you want answers to your questions, take the time look at how they do this. That would be better than asking others to explain it to you
Well, that’s an easy one. De-nationalise health industry and let the market (i.e. me and you and the doctors) sort out what their actual value is. What value they add.
The Doctors problem is having a monopoly employer the NHS. If they were self employed like real professionals – or Doctors in Europe -they would be paid the market rate.
GPs are the ultimate rent-seekers. They get paid for having us on their books whether they treat us or not. That’s why my GP (who works part-time) is ‘unable’ to provide an appointment within the next fortnight and can’t book one after that because ‘computer says no’.
‘Stuff their mouths with gold’, said Nye Bevan. ‘And every other orifice too!’, said Tony Blair, and proceeded to do just that.
The NHS is a sacred cow it needs putting down.It is also the means NOT the end, the end was health care free at the point of delivery AND it can’t even manage that.
As my 90 year old uncle observed during lockdown. We fought for an NHS to save us, not for us to save it
Hancock destroyed much of the hysteria around the NHS masks etc. Perhaps not forcing staff out if they refused the vaccines might have helped – then given the NHS IC beds were offered to the French was there ever an NHS overwhelmed crisis? Not according to some family members who actually worked there during the pandemic
The best one can say about the NHS is the outsourcing bits work well, what’s left may just pass muster as an Emergency service
Here’s a start – a close family member, a senior surgeon, only found out that he’d been working 1.5x the average, in his dept, for the same salary, once he became director of surgery & so had access to the numbers. For years the managers had been too weak to sort this out, and just allowed the lazy ones to get away with it – at direct cost to the hard workers. This is entirely typical of NHS ‘management’.
I am not sure if junior doctors are private contractors. They are still under training but when they have finished training they will be into quite big money. In line with the proverbial song “I want it now” in Charlies Chocolate Factory it appears very selfish to me.
Who need to “judge” it? Junior doctors are hot-footing it to Australia and Canada as soon as they can for the money. And good luck to them. This will keep happening until junior doctors gst pad more here. When the employer decides he’s had enough of losing his valuable employees, he’ll pay them more. Sorted; no “judgement” required.
But don’t worry. You just sit there and spend hours mulling over the complicated judgment you think is required.
How would you judge pay for an individual? The same way as everyone else does it across many industries – based on individual performance. It’s the norm: but you make it sound like it’s unmanageable.
There is nothing so unfair as the equal treatment of people with unequal capabilities. Treating a mass of people as one guarantees the lowest performance possible.
where did they dig up the prat who wrote this article. utter drivel from start to finish. as an employer i cant cut their tea breaks, slash their pay, torture, murder blah blah etc that this pseudo intellectual claims i can. i’m guessing he’s never had a proper job before, or indeed anything remotely resembling one. uni lecturer perhaps?
How sad when one considers how low we have come to be when it is at the very least improper, and in most cases illegal, to torture, murder and impoverish those in your employment. In the mind of the average leftist prole, that behavior is manifest in the comportment of management. Oh, to have lived the life of a shop keeper in Dickensian England.
He went overboard, but what’s your evidence that conditions are getting better for workers? Stagnant wages, precarious contracts, money lost to landlords who do next to nothing for it. There is a working class in this country and just because it delivers food and serves coffee or stacks amazon warehouses (perhaps all whilst being university educated) doesn’t mean it should not have solidarity with those on the shrinking factory floors (shrinking because our government seems so happy for Britain to produce less and less of its own goods through fewer and fewer decent jobs for its own people)
He went overboard, but what’s your evidence that conditions are getting better for workers? Stagnant wages, precarious contracts, money lost to landlords who do next to nothing for it. There is a working class in this country and just because it delivers food and serves coffee or stacks amazon warehouses (perhaps all whilst being university educated) doesn’t mean it should not have solidarity with those on the shrinking factory floors (shrinking because our government seems so happy for Britain to produce less and less of its own goods through fewer and fewer decent jobs for its own people)
He’s an old-school ex-Oxford professor, steeped in Marxist ideology, as many of his counterparts at Oxbridge are/were and some ended up being outed as spies for the Soviet Union.
If you can see the above comment Steve, I’m now waiting for you to tell me what I am. A snivelling snowflake socialist no doubt, who doesn’t care about his own country?
If you can see the above comment Steve, I’m now waiting for you to tell me what I am. A snivelling snowflake socialist no doubt, who doesn’t care about his own country?
How sad when one considers how low we have come to be when it is at the very least improper, and in most cases illegal, to torture, murder and impoverish those in your employment. In the mind of the average leftist prole, that behavior is manifest in the comportment of management. Oh, to have lived the life of a shop keeper in Dickensian England.
He’s an old-school ex-Oxford professor, steeped in Marxist ideology, as many of his counterparts at Oxbridge are/were and some ended up being outed as spies for the Soviet Union.
Some public sector workers have no right to strike. I think none of them should have that right, since they are employed by the public, who often can access no alternative service providers. If private sector workers strike, they harm their employers but the public can access alternative suppliers.
And your explanation for the widespread public support of this strike? I can’t see the counter-example to this (‘Pay the doctors less so even more of them give up on the NHS and go private’) being the likelier scenario..
And your explanation for the widespread public support of this strike? I can’t see the counter-example to this (‘Pay the doctors less so even more of them give up on the NHS and go private’) being the likelier scenario..
Sadly not.
But if I were, I’d be paying a shedload of tax supporting government spending and public services. I suggest you check again the real breakdown of tax contributions versus income bands before you go on insulting the people who pay the bills.
Pay the bills you say? Hmm, maybe there wouldn’t be strikes OR giant holes in national budgets if the top 1(0)% actually paid what they owe, as opposed to squirrelling it away in tax havens or using it for tax free “philanthropy” (i.e. influence operations or legal slush funds).
Also, I find it funny that you speak of insulting people when you come across like some medieval lord complaining about his ungrateful serfs in that comment, apparently assuming that everyone should be there at your beck and call.
Not everyone works in tech and gets money stuffed down their gullet.
However, that doesn’t mean people who don’t make 100k or whatever don’t deserve a living wage and decent working conditions, even if you’ve never been in a situation where you had to fight for that.
You know nothing about me, my history or circumstances. It’s unwise to make so many assumptions about other people’s beliefs and situation. There are numerous errors in what you assumed about me. I could tell you that my father was unemployed for 2 years when I was at school, but I suspect you wouldn’t believe me.
You know nothing about me, my history or circumstances. It’s unwise to make so many assumptions about other people’s beliefs and situation. There are numerous errors in what you assumed about me. I could tell you that my father was unemployed for 2 years when I was at school, but I suspect you wouldn’t believe me.
Pay the bills you say? Hmm, maybe there wouldn’t be strikes OR giant holes in national budgets if the top 1(0)% actually paid what they owe, as opposed to squirrelling it away in tax havens or using it for tax free “philanthropy” (i.e. influence operations or legal slush funds).
Also, I find it funny that you speak of insulting people when you come across like some medieval lord complaining about his ungrateful serfs in that comment, apparently assuming that everyone should be there at your beck and call.
Not everyone works in tech and gets money stuffed down their gullet.
However, that doesn’t mean people who don’t make 100k or whatever don’t deserve a living wage and decent working conditions, even if you’ve never been in a situation where you had to fight for that.
Sadly not.
But if I were, I’d be paying a shedload of tax supporting government spending and public services. I suggest you check again the real breakdown of tax contributions versus income bands before you go on insulting the people who pay the bills.
Typical neo-liberal nonsense, that denies the collective, social nature of work, in pursuit of greed and profit. As a trade unionist and university lecturer now retired I spent years fighting this clap trap that sought to reduce academics to the parlous state that private industry has succeeded in doing as a consequence of breaking the unions.
Divide and rule has always been the way of the bosses if they could get away with it. And get away with it they have for far too long. Doctors, nurses, ambulance workers, teachers, academics, railway workers, civil servants, BT engineers and more are finally discovering the collective power of the mass.
This advantage should not be squandered. The greed this government oversees rewarding their corporate cronies in the private sector despite their underperformance needs to be reversed so that all the workers can be paid a decent living wage. And this will only be achieved through such struggle as mass strikes.
The Guardian reported the Health Secretary claiming the 26% pay demand by junior doctors was unaffordable because it would add ÂŁ2bln to the public purse that would threaten the government’s efforts to control inflation. But the Defence Secretary has been given another ÂŁ2bln to replenish ammunition stocks that have been shipped off to Ukraine. A more perverse moral logic you could not make up, even if you tried. Inflation is acceptable when it comes to killing people in Ukraine, but unacceptable when it comes to paying the people who save lives and treat the sick in the UK!
The article is anti- capitalist, which makes me laugh. Capitalism is just barter. There is no other way of valuing human endeavour.
Striking is bartering but it does hold the whole public to ransom when it comes to essential public services.
What will junior doctors think of future generations of doctors who ask for more pay and less work than their predecessors, when they’re older and need more medical services? Why don’t they realise that the more they get for less work, the less doctors a free public system can afford to hire………
The reasons that Australian doctors are better paid and health insurance is more affordable is that it is a mixed public/private system with more money per capita going into healthcare.
If Cuba can provide the most number of doctors per capita than any other country in the world, despite the criminal blockade and sanctions the US imposes on it, then this bogus argument about public/ private is just not credible.
If we have money to waste on killing people in Ukraine then we should not even be having this debate. There is plenty money. This country is awash with money, We are the seventh richest country in the world. Yet we put up with government that imposes a scarcity of medical resources on the public because it does not really believe health care is a public good. If it could get away with privatising it, it would.
Our government looks to the failing health care rip off system in the US as its preferred model where the health care corporations and their oligarchs make a killing at the expense of the public.
Private health care is an insult to humanity and an ethical abomination. It should be banned. If Cuba can provide doctors to serve its own public, with spare to provide essential humanitarian aid abroad, then so can the UK.
If Cuba can provide the most number of doctors per capita than any other country in the world, despite the criminal blockade and sanctions the US imposes on it, then this bogus argument about public/ private is just not credible.
If we have money to waste on killing people in Ukraine then we should not even be having this debate. There is plenty money. This country is awash with money, We are the seventh richest country in the world. Yet we put up with government that imposes a scarcity of medical resources on the public because it does not really believe health care is a public good. If it could get away with privatising it, it would.
Our government looks to the failing health care rip off system in the US as its preferred model where the health care corporations and their oligarchs make a killing at the expense of the public.
Private health care is an insult to humanity and an ethical abomination. It should be banned. If Cuba can provide doctors to serve its own public, with spare to provide essential humanitarian aid abroad, then so can the UK.
How would you judge the annual individual pay for a doctor or nurse if you moved away from national pay scales? What metrics, what system, how much time and energy would you spend on this? How many disputes would arise about unfairness etc etc? Junior doctors rotate through their placements and organisations. So we resetting what we pay them every few months? Massive bureaucratic task.
Your point has some theoretical interest, but massively impractical even if we like a bit of the principle.
Bear in mind also GP are private contractors – there is something though in the mechanism via which they are paid. Debate for another time perhaps
where did they dig up the prat who wrote this article. utter drivel from start to finish. as an employer i cant cut their tea breaks, slash their pay, torture, murder blah blah etc that this pseudo intellectual claims i can. i’m guessing he’s never had a proper job before, or indeed anything remotely resembling one. uni lecturer perhaps?
Some public sector workers have no right to strike. I think none of them should have that right, since they are employed by the public, who often can access no alternative service providers. If private sector workers strike, they harm their employers but the public can access alternative suppliers.
Typical neo-liberal nonsense, that denies the collective, social nature of work, in pursuit of greed and profit. As a trade unionist and university lecturer now retired I spent years fighting this clap trap that sought to reduce academics to the parlous state that private industry has succeeded in doing as a consequence of breaking the unions.
Divide and rule has always been the way of the bosses if they could get away with it. And get away with it they have for far too long. Doctors, nurses, ambulance workers, teachers, academics, railway workers, civil servants, BT engineers and more are finally discovering the collective power of the mass.
This advantage should not be squandered. The greed this government oversees rewarding their corporate cronies in the private sector despite their underperformance needs to be reversed so that all the workers can be paid a decent living wage. And this will only be achieved through such struggle as mass strikes.
The Guardian reported the Health Secretary claiming the 26% pay demand by junior doctors was unaffordable because it would add ÂŁ2bln to the public purse that would threaten the government’s efforts to control inflation. But the Defence Secretary has been given another ÂŁ2bln to replenish ammunition stocks that have been shipped off to Ukraine. A more perverse moral logic you could not make up, even if you tried. Inflation is acceptable when it comes to killing people in Ukraine, but unacceptable when it comes to paying the people who save lives and treat the sick in the UK!
The article is anti- capitalist, which makes me laugh. Capitalism is just barter. There is no other way of valuing human endeavour.
Striking is bartering but it does hold the whole public to ransom when it comes to essential public services.
What will junior doctors think of future generations of doctors who ask for more pay and less work than their predecessors, when they’re older and need more medical services? Why don’t they realise that the more they get for less work, the less doctors a free public system can afford to hire………
The reasons that Australian doctors are better paid and health insurance is more affordable is that it is a mixed public/private system with more money per capita going into healthcare.
Peter B
1 year ago
“Nobody objects to the right to withhold oneâs labour”.
Actually, I do. I do not accept that this is an absolute right without any corresponding responsibilities.
If you are a professional and have signed an employment contract to deliver services in return for a salary, then you have accepted responsiblity to deliver those services to the terms of the contract. You also have responsibilities to customers and co-workers.
Of course, if you don’t care about professionalism and taking your responsibilities seriously, that need not concern you.
In my view, it is extremely unwise for professionals like doctors to strike since it fundamentally undermines the professional ethos expected from them. Reputations take years to build and moments to destroy.
Having said all that, I can imagine that in practice it’s not an easy decision for teachers – for example – whether to strike.
But the fundamental reason they lack any negotatiating power is that they still insist on being treated as a mass and not as individuals as in private industry. If they accepted regional/local pay based on individual performance without things like automatic progression pay every year (this apparently still exists in the NHS), then a lot of the problems would go away. Except for the fact that lower performing employees would be paid less.
Since the public sector unions still insist that lower performing employees must be paid the same as higher performers and that they cannot be fired (drunk on the job train drivers seem impossible to dismiss), I suggest that the unions as they currently exist are archaic.
Milton Gibbon
1 year ago
I didn’t realise that commenters would have their ramblings published as articles. It’s sixth form stuff, completely incoherent. How did this load of garbled nonsense get past the editors?
I don’t disagree with the first few paragraphs but from “The history of the British working-class…” it reads like mental diarrhoea.
Terence Francis Eagleton FBA[4] (born 22 February 1943) is an English literary theorist, critic, and public intellectual.[5][6][7][8] He is currently Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University. Eagleton has published over forty books, but remains best known for Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), which has sold over 750,000 copies.[9]
Would it be fair to say that: His is the archetypal Public Sector parasite who has contributed virtually nothing to the public good yet has plundered system on a titanic scale thanks to his fantastic pension? And all through no fault of his own?
No. Although that certainly describes most of the capitalist elite. Presumably Terry can survive on income from his books, and Charles survives in part on his pension.
If we are going to talk about runaway pension entitlements maybe we should concentrate not, or not just, on the public sector which is being reformed, but in the generation that made off like gangbusters with the triple lock. About whom the octogenarians on Unherd donât seem to be so pushed about.
No it would not. Would it be fair to say that you’re a troll? He’s a university professor who works in one of those places where new knowledge is generated and culture is preserved, but hey, who cares about that crap? What do you mean by ‘public sector parasite’? Are all public sector workers parasites? What does ‘plundered the system’ actually mean? His book on literary theory has been very influential and an important contribution to literature studies but hey, what’s the point of studying literature?
Calm down Ms Hamlyn you ONLY demean yourself by such vulgarity, do you not? And to think you claim to be a University Lecturer, need I say more?
However to indulge you, culture may have been preserved and ânew knowledge generatedâ in some, in fact very few of our plethora of Universities, but frankly most should be closed.
No, not all Public Sector Workers are parasites but an enormous number obviously are and this must cease.
âPlundered the systemâ translates as doing very little if any work, yet claiming a decent salary and in all cases a fantastic pension, with the extraordinary bonus of being virtually unsackable.
I dare say Eagletonâs book on Literary Theory is a notable tome but is rather niche is it not? As to why one should study Literature, you tell me.
ps: How is your little spat over speciality/specialty going with Steve Murray? (of this Parish.)
Calm down Ms Hamlyn you ONLY demean yourself by such vulgarity, do you not? And to think you claim to be a University Lecturer, need I say more?
However to indulge you, culture may have been preserved and ânew knowledge generatedâ in some, in fact very few of our plethora of Universities, but frankly most should be closed.
No, not all Public Sector Workers are parasites but an enormous number obviously are and this must cease.
âPlundered the systemâ translates as doing very little if any work, yet claiming a decent salary and in all cases a fantastic pension, with the extraordinary bonus of being virtually unsackable.
I dare say Eagletonâs book on Literary Theory is a notable tome but is rather niche is it not? As to why one should study Literature, you tell me.
ps: How is your little spat over speciality/specialty going with Steve Murray? (of this Parish.)
No. Although that certainly describes most of the capitalist elite. Presumably Terry can survive on income from his books, and Charles survives in part on his pension.
If we are going to talk about runaway pension entitlements maybe we should concentrate not, or not just, on the public sector which is being reformed, but in the generation that made off like gangbusters with the triple lock. About whom the octogenarians on Unherd donât seem to be so pushed about.
No it would not. Would it be fair to say that you’re a troll? He’s a university professor who works in one of those places where new knowledge is generated and culture is preserved, but hey, who cares about that crap? What do you mean by ‘public sector parasite’? Are all public sector workers parasites? What does ‘plundered the system’ actually mean? His book on literary theory has been very influential and an important contribution to literature studies but hey, what’s the point of studying literature?
Would it be fair to say that: His is the archetypal Public Sector parasite who has contributed virtually nothing to the public good yet has plundered system on a titanic scale thanks to his fantastic pension? And all through no fault of his own?
The trouble is that I can and have. My (very modest) criticism was that he could and should have stopped half way through and the article would have been better for it.
Nice try. I upvoted you.
The trouble is that I can and have. My (very modest) criticism was that he could and should have stopped half way through and the article would have been better for it.
Nice try. I upvoted you.
Terence Francis Eagleton FBA[4] (born 22 February 1943) is an English literary theorist, critic, and public intellectual.[5][6][7][8] He is currently Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University. Eagleton has published over forty books, but remains best known for Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), which has sold over 750,000 copies.[9]
I conclude from this that you can barely read. Irony?
Milton Gibbon
1 year ago
I didn’t realise that commenters would have their ramblings published as articles. It’s sixth form stuff, completely incoherent. How did this load of garbled nonsense get past the editors?
I don’t disagree with the first few paragraphs but from “The history of the British working-class…” it reads like mental diarrhoea.
Last edited 1 year ago by Milton Gibbon
rob drummond
1 year ago
As usual there is much spoken about the current series of disputes – much of it WRONG.
The latest was: NEWLY QUALIFIED – Junior Doctors:
”A (Junior) Doctor earns the same as a Barista (coffee not the other one) – this is not true. a simple online check shows Costa Coffee Baristas are paid less than or around ÂŁ10 an hour – not the same as a Jr Doc Starting Salary at all. – also a Jr Doc salary has an upward career path. I imagine a Barista stays the same. ”Newly Qualified” comment:
I heard someone on the radio just this week saying
”I am on ÂŁ14 yes (I dont know if that was true or not obviously) and I have to pay ÂŁ5.80 per day tube fare”
”then the cheapest meal for lunch in the canteen is (cant remember exactly) ÂŁ4”
– plus I have to be the first on-call and I get asked to do overtime – Plus I get all the ”dogsbody” jobs. Awww how terrible – the key point here is ”You are Newly Qualified” – also in my day, we used to make our own lunch and take that with us to work…….. What happened to that strange idea?
Tax-Payers:
I am not saying these people dont deserve a pay rise – but there are lots of TAX-Payers who have to pay for yoru salary from theirs and they too have probably (in the main) suffered a real terms pay cut.
And the ÂŁ22bn* of our money being pumped directly into the hands of landlords via rental allowance? I suppose that money is well worth it? OR we could support the strikers in trying to move us towards a high wage economy where employers pay workers properly (i.e. where no one has to rely on state support to help them pay for overpriced private rental accomodation) and then hard work rather than asset hoarding can become a real route out of poverty.
*https://propertyindustryeye.com/housing-benefits-costs-taxpayers-22bn-a-year-more-than-we-spend-on-police/
Itâs all relative, just because âtheyâ canât get as âpissed as a fartâ every night of the week is hardly poverty in the old sense of the word is it?
Indeed it is relative, as the Rowntree website makes clear, but the point is that in the 5th wealthiest economy in the world (though soon destined to be as poor as Poland we are often told), ordinary people should not be getting poorer (often to the benefit of those enjoying record profits, and in ways far disprortionate to their efforts or services for others – speculators, landowners, investers etc). It is not merely material deprivation though, but the sense of ownership people are losing over their lives doing menial low-skill jobs (supermarkets, amazon warehouses etc) that can’t provide them with a sense of pride or purpose in the way that skilled industrial jobs used to for the lower classes. Additionally, having a lot of disenfranchised people around makes us vulnerable to the seductions of demagogues. What do you say to that? https://www.jrf.org.uk/our-work/what-is-poverty
PS getting pissed on no money at all has been possible ever since supermarkets were first allowed to sell alcohol in 1962
Come on Charles, holding out hopes for you as a Blue Labourite who believes in a strong, productive Britain that rewards work over wealth, need over demand and doesn’t want to let our families, communities and town centres get torn apart by the ravages of the market..
Working Class pride was destroyed eons ago by âSocial Servicesâ, â Town Plannersâ and countless other socialist busybodies trying to create some form of pseudo Marxist Utopia.
Then State Education tried to destroy their sense of National pride by âguilt trippingâ them over arrant nonsense about slavery, Empire etc.
As Orwell pointed out there nothing a Quislington socialist despises more than the Working class. All that whoring, drinking, dog fighting and general exuberance was just TOO much for them, and still is.
However let us rejoice, despite this socialist onslaught, it didnât work!
âTheyâ voted for Brexit, Boris and given half a chance would bring back the Gallows.
Twice in the last century âtheyâ have saved us and shall do so again, so poverty be damned!
Ok you haven’t really answered my question about whether you think living standards are going in a good direction in this country and on what the possible ramifications/solutions might be, but I’ll address your points in any case.
Yes the left does not have a completely shining record on its treatment of the working class, even the slum clearances resulted in some disruption to traditional ways of life. But those town planners (I assume you mean the ones who built the high rises in the 60s?) also helped create a surge in low-rise council housing before Thatcher started selling them off to leave the remaining publicly-owned blocks ghettos of alienation and abandonment.
Not sure what nonesense about slavery you’re talking about. As a history teacher I can tell you that schools teach that slavery is a universal human problem common to all Empires and that while there are many good things our Empire gave the world, we need to acknowledge its faults. Though I am intrigued that over stagnant wages, the breaking of unions, the rising of rents and the dying of skilled labour you choose the two hours a week of history lessons received by working class children as the experience that most damaged working class pride since the 60s.
Not an Orwell quote I’ve heard of. He was a patriotic socialist of the kind I had hoped to find in you, but instead all I’ve found (so far) is self-satisfied bluster and incoherence, though I do envy your optimism.
‘Poverty, be damned!’ So here do you mean that so long as the working classes are voting for things like Brexit and the gallows, we can assume they’re alright and there’s no poverty to speak of? And who and what policies then for you have and are now going to ‘save us’? What has been the big pay off? I genuinely would like to have some reason for hope. Will ripping up our commitment to human rights in order to stop these 45,000 ‘invaders’ (people generally fleeing oppression and war) finally bring us this bright future the Tories have been working on delivering us these last 12 years? What’s your favourite Tory policy and how has it improved your life and the lives of ordinary people in this country?
Well and in reverse order if I may, I do not have a âfavourite Tory policyâ for the very simple reason there havenât been any. As for the improvement in the lives of ordinary people there havenât been any. In fact given the appalling response to the COVID nonsense there are unlikely be to any for a very considerable time.
The âinvasionâ of 45,000 is neither here nor there. The damage has already been done, as was foretold by âyou know whoâ many years ago. We have had the âflashâ and now we must await the âbangâ.
As to poverty! What a splendid old chestnut, which can be distorted to mean almost anything. Poverty of opportunity, poverty intellect, poverty of housing, poverty of culture and so it goes on. However as I first voted in the General Election of 1959 I have seen the almost total banishment of material poverty as we used to know it. Unfortunately the perception of poverty is all often used to feed that âgreen eyed gremlinâ; Envy. Perhaps you havenât noticed this?
The Orwell reference is from the wartime essay entitled âThe Lion and the Unicorn â, and I am astonished that you havenât heard of it.
The destruction of working class pride I blame almost entirely on Education, and in particular Comprehensive Education, about which, and for the sake of brevity, all one can say is that it is Comprehensively dreadful! Why was the destruction of the Grammar Schools permitted, other than for reasons ideological socialist dogma, well annunciated by that cretin Tony Crosland and his famous expletive âF*ck the Grammar Schoolsâ! Charming and Oxford man at that!
Rather sadly the Tories were also complicit by their apathy.
However this is not to completely exculpate the âMediaâ and in particular the BBC who have played their part in the vilification of the English working class, and more specifically the dreaded âWhite Van Manâ, who is normally portrayed as a monosyllabic fascist thug who is beyond redemption.
So, there we have it. Fortunately I have already passed the âfinishing postâ so this is all rather academic now, but I am grateful that I at least have spent my life in a âgreen and pleasant landâ.
Main Edition
US
FR
“Nobody objects to the right to withhold oneâs labour”.
Actually, I do. I do not accept that this is an absolute right without any corresponding responsibilities.
If you are a professional and have signed an employment contract to deliver services in return for a salary, then you have accepted responsiblity to deliver those services to the terms of the contract. You also have responsibilities to customers and co-workers.
Of course, if you don’t care about professionalism and taking your responsibilities seriously, that need not concern you.
In my view, it is extremely unwise for professionals like doctors to strike since it fundamentally undermines the professional ethos expected from them. Reputations take years to build and moments to destroy.
Having said all that, I can imagine that in practice it’s not an easy decision for teachers – for example – whether to strike.
But the fundamental reason they lack any negotatiating power is that they still insist on being treated as a mass and not as individuals as in private industry. If they accepted regional/local pay based on individual performance without things like automatic progression pay every year (this apparently still exists in the NHS), then a lot of the problems would go away. Except for the fact that lower performing employees would be paid less.
Since the public sector unions still insist that lower performing employees must be paid the same as higher performers and that they cannot be fired (drunk on the job train drivers seem impossible to dismiss), I suggest that the unions as they currently exist are archaic.
How would you judge the annual individual pay for a doctor or nurse if you moved away from national pay scales? What metrics, what system, how much time and energy would you spend on this? How many disputes would arise about unfairness etc etc? Junior doctors rotate through their placements and organisations. So we resetting what we pay them every few months? Massive bureaucratic task.
Your point has some theoretical interest, but massively impractical even if we like a bit of the principle.
Bear in mind also GP are private contractors – there is something though in the mechanism via which they are paid. Debate for another time perhaps
So what do you suggest?
sorry all for the mess I created below âŠ
..
âŠ.
âŠ.
Sit down quickly and negotiate for a start.
Match the private sector rate of award in arguably equivalent areas given the educational and deferred gratification commitment needed to become a doctor – so Banking industry not a bad comparator. 1-2 year deal initially with commitment to inflation matching going forward.
More fundamentally rapid increase in training places to tackle demand-supply imbalance coupled with student debt alleviation once X years NHS service complete- point being we are losing Docs regularly to Aus, Canada, Middle East etc
This actually doesnât cost as much as we think because we are paying silly agency rates but nonetheless weâve some fiscal headroom given energy costs been lower than expected and interest rates not quite as high as feared. So a choice that can be made.
In order to avoid the âsweeping generalisationsâ you chastised me for earlier, the crucial difference is that Bankers* MAKE money, Doctors donât.
Additionally the Public Sector Worker is virtually unsackable and in receipt of magnificent index linked pensions. Thus how is reform even possible?
(* Known to my generation as Money Lenders and they worked in Counting Houses not Banks.)
How much money would our economy generate if no doctors? Arguably not much.
Didnât we all bail out the Bankers too?
Reform is poss but you have to engage.
Survival of the fittest?
We had to âbail outâ the bankers!
I do not think the economy would notice.
It did not seem to during Covid
All over Europe they ave doctors-very few employed by the state
They stand on their own feet then unlike our massive public sector.
They stand on their own feet then unlike our massive public sector.
Survival of the fittest?
We had to âbail outâ the bankers!
I do not think the economy would notice.
It did not seem to during Covid
All over Europe they ave doctors-very few employed by the state
I would imagine that about 20% of government employees are on long-term sick leave with âmental problemsâ. Nobody can do anything. As you say, they are unsackable.
As many as 20%! Why isnât this a national scandal!
And what, if anything is being done about it may I ask?
And with big fat pensions at the end what is there to complain about? The real battle to survive is in the private sector in which the wealth of the country depends. The public sector has grown far too fat.
Been like that for yearsâŠ.
And with big fat pensions at the end what is there to complain about? The real battle to survive is in the private sector in which the wealth of the country depends. The public sector has grown far too fat.
Been like that for yearsâŠ.
Iâm glad youâre not in charge
You think 20% one ion five off “sick” is normal ?
He begins his post with âI would imagineâ and then proceeds to refer to âmental problemsâ like a caricature of a spittle-flecked, swivel-eyed loon, and you expect me to take what he says seriously?
There used to be a person in every group of (un)civil servants whose job it was to remind members of the group that unless they took their “sick leave” by a certain date they would loose it. At that time (60s) I believe the going rate was 6 weeks per year. presume HR/Union rep now fulfills that function.
You have no way of knowing whether what you are saying is true or not and as such you are simply polishing petty minded prejudice
He is near the truth. I have heard all this which was happening 30 years ago as well. I forgot all about it until it was brought up. They have it very cushy.
I know is true – and more besides – heard from the horses mouth âŠ.
He is near the truth. I have heard all this which was happening 30 years ago as well. I forgot all about it until it was brought up. They have it very cushy.
I know is true – and more besides – heard from the horses mouth âŠ.
Yeah. It used to be fifteen days but many of them use it for extra holiday and not taking it off shows the others up so there is pressure to take it as well as holidays.
Yes that was common practise âŠ
You have no way of knowing whether what you are saying is true or not and as such you are simply polishing petty minded prejudice
Yeah. It used to be fifteen days but many of them use it for extra holiday and not taking it off shows the others up so there is pressure to take it as well as holidays.
Yes that was common practise âŠ
There is some truth in what he says. I know it first hand through living in a civil service hostel.
There used to be a person in every group of (un)civil servants whose job it was to remind members of the group that unless they took their “sick leave” by a certain date they would loose it. At that time (60s) I believe the going rate was 6 weeks per year. presume HR/Union rep now fulfills that function.
There is some truth in what he says. I know it first hand through living in a civil service hostel.
They are off sick as they have so many weeks sick leave to use if they are sick but of course many take it off anyway as they don’t need to make a profit. That’s the private sectors job.
He begins his post with âI would imagineâ and then proceeds to refer to âmental problemsâ like a caricature of a spittle-flecked, swivel-eyed loon, and you expect me to take what he says seriously?
They are off sick as they have so many weeks sick leave to use if they are sick but of course many take it off anyway as they don’t need to make a profit. That’s the private sectors job.
You think 20% one ion five off “sick” is normal ?
I would challenge that as a former HR manager and a Full Time Trade Union officer, they are frustrating their contract, âFrustration of contractâ is a legal concept. It refers to an event which: (1) wasnât reasonably foreseeable at the point the contract was formed; (2) isnât under the direct control of either party; and (3) makes any further performance of the contract, as it was originally intended to operate, impossible. Where these three factors exist together, a contract can be lawfully terminated. In the employment context, this means there would be no actual dismissal, i.e. there wouldnât be an event to pin an unfair dismissal claim on.Whether the cause be organic Cancer, etc, or non organic (all in the mind”. Ergo fair dimissal is an option, it requires the will of the omployer.
I used to work with a rehab company that also had public sector clients. They used to roll their eyes when the public sector cropped up in conversation. If someone did not want to go back to work there was little that could be done to make them and their employment was rarely, if ever, terminated
They are unsackable with gold plated pensions regardless of ability.
They are unsackable with gold plated pensions regardless of ability.
Thereâs a whole raft of ailments at the disposal of malingerers (eg whiplash) – in any sector – and quoting legalese doesnât alter that.
I used to work with a rehab company that also had public sector clients. They used to roll their eyes when the public sector cropped up in conversation. If someone did not want to go back to work there was little that could be done to make them and their employment was rarely, if ever, terminated
Thereâs a whole raft of ailments at the disposal of malingerers (eg whiplash) – in any sector – and quoting legalese doesnât alter that.
I would imagine itâs 219%.
They are given so many weeks sick leave in addition to holidays and a large number take their sick leave as an entitlement without being sick. They live in the cradle to grave culture risk free.
Given the excellent terms and conditions enjoyed from the cleaner up (never factored into wage comparisons thrown around by unions representing the public sector) itâs a no brainier for the cunning to take advantage of, for example, the generous sick leave and other âperksââŠ..
This is not a fact. I ve worked all over public sector. We get v concerned if its over 5%. I work with lots of contractors, who have similar rates. Performance management has radically changed over the last 15 years.
As many as 20%! Why isnât this a national scandal!
And what, if anything is being done about it may I ask?
Iâm glad youâre not in charge
I would challenge that as a former HR manager and a Full Time Trade Union officer, they are frustrating their contract, âFrustration of contractâ is a legal concept. It refers to an event which: (1) wasnât reasonably foreseeable at the point the contract was formed; (2) isnât under the direct control of either party; and (3) makes any further performance of the contract, as it was originally intended to operate, impossible. Where these three factors exist together, a contract can be lawfully terminated. In the employment context, this means there would be no actual dismissal, i.e. there wouldnât be an event to pin an unfair dismissal claim on.Whether the cause be organic Cancer, etc, or non organic (all in the mind”. Ergo fair dimissal is an option, it requires the will of the omployer.
I would imagine itâs 219%.
They are given so many weeks sick leave in addition to holidays and a large number take their sick leave as an entitlement without being sick. They live in the cradle to grave culture risk free.
Given the excellent terms and conditions enjoyed from the cleaner up (never factored into wage comparisons thrown around by unions representing the public sector) itâs a no brainier for the cunning to take advantage of, for example, the generous sick leave and other âperksââŠ..
This is not a fact. I ve worked all over public sector. We get v concerned if its over 5%. I work with lots of contractors, who have similar rates. Performance management has radically changed over the last 15 years.
Bankers create no wealth. Goods and services are created elsewhere, by workers and entrepreneurs.
In fact they may well destroy wealth and income by creating a bubble where the losses are socialised.
Don’t bankers do loans and pensions and insurance and all the money things we need though too?
Not saying they did a good job. Things just blow up all over the place at the moment, but all systems and businesses have risks.
I agree, they create no wealth except for themselves. I was recently surprised to discover that banks literally create money when a mortgage debt is incurred. The mortgage deed that is signed is the credit thatâs created, which they then lend back to you at compound interest for 25 years.
Don’t bankers do loans and pensions and insurance and all the money things we need though too?
Not saying they did a good job. Things just blow up all over the place at the moment, but all systems and businesses have risks.
I agree, they create no wealth except for themselves. I was recently surprised to discover that banks literally create money when a mortgage debt is incurred. The mortgage deed that is signed is the credit thatâs created, which they then lend back to you at compound interest for 25 years.
Pensions in the Public Sector are four times greater comparitively than the private sector and are safe with no risk through our taxes. All public sectors workers have that benefit. Yes banks make money like all industry in the private sector where their taxes support the public sector. They call it public sector gold plated pensions I believe thoroughly protected by the government.
Bankers make money? To a point, they want alot in return. How is wealth created, is one of the key questions for these strikes. Who keeps citizens well, educated, keeps us safe, runs whats left of our civic society.
The people who now enter these professions(where there is no bonus related pay), hock themselves into min. 50 to 70k debt for the privilege. That’s why you have strikes along with over 9% inflation for 2 years running.
How much money would our economy generate if no doctors? Arguably not much.
Didnât we all bail out the Bankers too?
Reform is poss but you have to engage.
I would imagine that about 20% of government employees are on long-term sick leave with âmental problemsâ. Nobody can do anything. As you say, they are unsackable.
Bankers create no wealth. Goods and services are created elsewhere, by workers and entrepreneurs.
In fact they may well destroy wealth and income by creating a bubble where the losses are socialised.
Pensions in the Public Sector are four times greater comparitively than the private sector and are safe with no risk through our taxes. All public sectors workers have that benefit. Yes banks make money like all industry in the private sector where their taxes support the public sector. They call it public sector gold plated pensions I believe thoroughly protected by the government.
Bankers make money? To a point, they want alot in return. How is wealth created, is one of the key questions for these strikes. Who keeps citizens well, educated, keeps us safe, runs whats left of our civic society.
The people who now enter these professions(where there is no bonus related pay), hock themselves into min. 50 to 70k debt for the privilege. That’s why you have strikes along with over 9% inflation for 2 years running.
I have a problem with this idea of ânegotiationâ. If A wants a pay rise because A feels poor at the moment and A earns ÂŁ30,000pa but B earns ÂŁ40,000 and still wants a pay rise – are you allowed to talk about pensions?
I worked in the private sector and earned more money than in the public sector but with a minimal pension. In theory, I should have saved for the future whilst those in the public sector didnât have to save because they could look forward to a fabulous pension.
Today, the public sector unions argue that their pension canât even be considered in pay negotiations.
You have to opt in to a public sector pension and make contributions. Itâs not free. Itâs just a different form of saving.
Wrong. Your pension is inflated by an equal payment from the employer. You pay ÂŁ1 and your employer pays ÂŁ1. That is a perk. Both sets of contributions are tax free and that is another perk. If you retire, your pension is underwritten by the government – another perk.
You have obviously been receiving these perks without understanding what they mean. You could work for a private employer who does not offer such a system. Then you have to choose your own way of getting a pension but this will depend on movements of stocks and shares – you could lose it all.
Or you could have a reasonable pension but the contributors stop contributing. Your pension reduces or can, in theory, go to nothing.
The government-backed pension is such a perk that it is obscene. But those that have it say the same, you have to pay so it is not free.
Chris, whatever happened to “Workplace” pensions which, I understand, had to be offered to an employee within a short (specified) time after starting work? PS I retired (as an employer) just before they were introduced. Question open to all especially those with special knowledge. ex HR?
Workplace pensions are subject to market movements. They’re not defined benefit.
Workplace pensions are subject to market movements. They’re not defined benefit.
Chris, whatever happened to “Workplace” pensions which, I understand, had to be offered to an employee within a short (specified) time after starting work? PS I retired (as an employer) just before they were introduced. Question open to all especially those with special knowledge. ex HR?
Those âcontributionsâ are MINUSCULE in comparison to the Private Sector, as you well know!
The GPs you deride pay 22% of their income (both the employer and employee contributions) for their lovely pension.
Few who pay such a large proportion of their salary over, say, 30 years, would not end up with a decent pension.
I am so sorry, I was under the misapprehension that GPâs were self-employed.
Exactly.
Exactly.
I am so sorry, I was under the misapprehension that GPâs were self-employed.
The GPs you deride pay 22% of their income (both the employer and employee contributions) for their lovely pension.
Few who pay such a large proportion of their salary over, say, 30 years, would not end up with a decent pension.
The employers contributions are large and a major part of public sector pay.
Public sector employers pay vastly more into employees pensions than private sector adding some 30% to overall income.
Public sector employers pay vastly more into employees pensions than private sector adding some 30% to overall income.
Wrong. Your pension is inflated by an equal payment from the employer. You pay ÂŁ1 and your employer pays ÂŁ1. That is a perk. Both sets of contributions are tax free and that is another perk. If you retire, your pension is underwritten by the government – another perk.
You have obviously been receiving these perks without understanding what they mean. You could work for a private employer who does not offer such a system. Then you have to choose your own way of getting a pension but this will depend on movements of stocks and shares – you could lose it all.
Or you could have a reasonable pension but the contributors stop contributing. Your pension reduces or can, in theory, go to nothing.
The government-backed pension is such a perk that it is obscene. But those that have it say the same, you have to pay so it is not free.
Those âcontributionsâ are MINUSCULE in comparison to the Private Sector, as you well know!
The employers contributions are large and a major part of public sector pay.
Public sector pensions are a shadow of what they once were. You wonât find anybody who started in the public sector within the last 20 years on a final salary scheme anymore
But it’s not like all the other ones have died off. They’re still living it up without having to work.
But it’s not like all the other ones have died off. They’re still living it up without having to work.
So many teachers I have met were early retirees and most were enjoying life to the full by virtue of a generous state pension.
You have to opt in to a public sector pension and make contributions. Itâs not free. Itâs just a different form of saving.
Public sector pensions are a shadow of what they once were. You wonât find anybody who started in the public sector within the last 20 years on a final salary scheme anymore
So many teachers I have met were early retirees and most were enjoying life to the full by virtue of a generous state pension.
Agency rates include the the total cost of employment otherwise paid by the employer, often up to an additional 20% (like NICS, pensions, bonuses, expenses, holiday and sick pay, insurances and recruitment costs). Agency staff pay has to cover holidays, sickness, their pensions and travel expenses.
In order to avoid the âsweeping generalisationsâ you chastised me for earlier, the crucial difference is that Bankers* MAKE money, Doctors donât.
Additionally the Public Sector Worker is virtually unsackable and in receipt of magnificent index linked pensions. Thus how is reform even possible?
(* Known to my generation as Money Lenders and they worked in Counting Houses not Banks.)
I have a problem with this idea of ânegotiationâ. If A wants a pay rise because A feels poor at the moment and A earns ÂŁ30,000pa but B earns ÂŁ40,000 and still wants a pay rise – are you allowed to talk about pensions?
I worked in the private sector and earned more money than in the public sector but with a minimal pension. In theory, I should have saved for the future whilst those in the public sector didnât have to save because they could look forward to a fabulous pension.
Today, the public sector unions argue that their pension canât even be considered in pay negotiations.
Agency rates include the the total cost of employment otherwise paid by the employer, often up to an additional 20% (like NICS, pensions, bonuses, expenses, holiday and sick pay, insurances and recruitment costs). Agency staff pay has to cover holidays, sickness, their pensions and travel expenses.
sorry all for the mess I created below âŠ
..
Sit down quickly and negotiate for a start.
Match the private sector rate of award in arguably equivalent areas given the educational and deferred gratification commitment needed to become a doctor – so Banking industry not a bad comparator. 1-2 year deal initially with commitment to inflation matching going forward.
More fundamentally rapid increase in training places to tackle demand-supply imbalance coupled with student debt alleviation once X years NHS service complete- point being we are losing Docs regularly to Aus, Canada, Middle East etc
This actually doesnât cost as much as we think because we are paying silly agency rates but nonetheless weâve some fiscal headroom given energy costs been lower than expected and interest rates not quite as high as feared. So a choice that can be made.
I accept there are practical challenges here.
On the other hand, we’ve lived for at least five decades with a healthcare system in which junior doctors are massively overworked – I recall reports of 80 hour weeks being worked in the past – and there has been little serious effort made to rectify this. Quite how having overworked and tired doctors is safe for patients (and the doctors themselves) has always eluded me.
The fact that such things persist tells me the current system is poorly managed and structured and that something needs to change. As does the absurd cap on doctors training and persistent need to import labour. We need to recognise these things as the bugs that they are and not simply features.
I’m not going to attempt to work out how pay should be managed in the NHS. It’s not easy. But there are enough people employed already to do this. Probably too many.
I might observe here that there’s a massive bureaucracy already on hand to deal with the massive bureaucratic task ! But in my experience, massive bureaucracies create at least as many problems as they solve.
On “fairness” (a term which is never defined by those who use it), there is nothing particularly fair in my book about paying a large group of people the same regardless of their actual contribution.
My daughter is a recently qualified doctor here in the UK, and has been very well trained as part of her medical training in the importance of not being overworked. All good, no-one wants to be faced with a doctor who is too tired to make a proper diagnosis or treatment decision. The upshot is that the workload that and I and her brother (both solicitors) think is entirely normal, she would think is intolerable.
Very pleased to hear that. And please don’t read my comments as being anti-doctor – that’s not really my intent.
I also hope that the absurd pension lifetime allowance gets raised tomorrow. For everyone – not just the doctors. But one of the most stupid and short-sighted policy errors of recent years to actively encourage doctors to retire early when we don’t have enough and many wish to continue working. No one should have to pay more than 50% effective (or marginal rate) income tax. Certainly no doctor.
If you got the public sector pensions pro rata you would be over the moon.
If you got the public sector pensions pro rata you would be over the moon.
Very pleased to hear that. And please don’t read my comments as being anti-doctor – that’s not really my intent.
I also hope that the absurd pension lifetime allowance gets raised tomorrow. For everyone – not just the doctors. But one of the most stupid and short-sighted policy errors of recent years to actively encourage doctors to retire early when we don’t have enough and many wish to continue working. No one should have to pay more than 50% effective (or marginal rate) income tax. Certainly no doctor.
My daughter is a recently qualified doctor here in the UK, and has been very well trained as part of her medical training in the importance of not being overworked. All good, no-one wants to be faced with a doctor who is too tired to make a proper diagnosis or treatment decision. The upshot is that the workload that and I and her brother (both solicitors) think is entirely normal, she would think is intolerable.
Large organisations do this all the time. If you want answers to your questions, take the time look at how they do this. That would be better than asking others to explain it to you
I think large organisations are very much part of the problem. If, for example, each hospital was its own employer /business then it would set its own pay scales to match its area, demand etc. If the staff at another hospital were unhappy with their pay they could change jobs, employer, strike etc.
The problem basically is rigid inflexible pay and employment conditions due to national scales, employers etc. And organisations being too big to fail.
Smaller is almost always, in the medium to long term, better even if sometimes less efficient on the surface.
Itâs tricky finding right balance for sure.
What public wouldnât easily accept is the impact of more wage rate local freedom as some places would win and others lose meaning hospitals would close. Furthermore we need to close the demand-supply gap a bit more first or wages just go one way.
Maybe the private insurance model would work better where the doctors seek the patients?
Itâs tricky finding right balance for sure.
What public wouldnât easily accept is the impact of more wage rate local freedom as some places would win and others lose meaning hospitals would close. Furthermore we need to close the demand-supply gap a bit more first or wages just go one way.
Maybe the private insurance model would work better where the doctors seek the patients?
The rules are different in the public sector. Everyone is cushioned by union rights.
I think large organisations are very much part of the problem. If, for example, each hospital was its own employer /business then it would set its own pay scales to match its area, demand etc. If the staff at another hospital were unhappy with their pay they could change jobs, employer, strike etc.
The problem basically is rigid inflexible pay and employment conditions due to national scales, employers etc. And organisations being too big to fail.
Smaller is almost always, in the medium to long term, better even if sometimes less efficient on the surface.
The rules are different in the public sector. Everyone is cushioned by union rights.
We cannot make any judgement about their pay because we have no idea about cost of any NHS treatment.
Wages are part of cost and the rest is bought by the state and financed by government from our taxes.
Wages are part of cost and the rest is bought by the state and financed by government from our taxes.
Well, that’s an easy one. De-nationalise health industry and let the market (i.e. me and you and the doctors) sort out what their actual value is. What value they add.
Decide what their value is? How much money would you put towards trying to save yours or a family member’s life if they had something life-threatening? Priceless is how much their value is. And who will decide how much that comes to in monetery terms? The richest of us.
I live in the Netherlands (supposedly a shining beacon of state-supported private healthcare) and have already been advised to call an uber instead of an ambulance in case of an emergency to avoid the 800 euro ‘eigen risico’ costs that would be incurred if I called one.
Something has to happen as it certainly is not working.
Decide what their value is? How much money would you put towards trying to save yours or a family member’s life if they had something life-threatening? Priceless is how much their value is. And who will decide how much that comes to in monetery terms? The richest of us.
I live in the Netherlands (supposedly a shining beacon of state-supported private healthcare) and have already been advised to call an uber instead of an ambulance in case of an emergency to avoid the 800 euro ‘eigen risico’ costs that would be incurred if I called one.
Something has to happen as it certainly is not working.
The Doctors problem is having a monopoly employer the NHS. If they were self employed like real professionals – or Doctors in Europe -they would be paid the market rate.
GPs are the ultimate rent-seekers. They get paid for having us on their books whether they treat us or not. That’s why my GP (who works part-time) is ‘unable’ to provide an appointment within the next fortnight and can’t book one after that because ‘computer says no’.
‘Stuff their mouths with gold’, said Nye Bevan. ‘And every other orifice too!’, said Tony Blair, and proceeded to do just that.
No – the ultimate rent seekers are people who collect rent.
No – the ultimate rent seekers are people who collect rent.
If the private sector pay more how can the ideologue above criticise Capitalists? More to the point the NHS was 100 years behind Great Western Railway
Https:/www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/2370272.nhs-born-in-gwr-hospital/
The NHS is a sacred cow it needs putting down.It is also the means NOT the end, the end was health care free at the point of delivery AND it can’t even manage that.
As my 90 year old uncle observed during lockdown. We fought for an NHS to save us, not for us to save it
Hancock destroyed much of the hysteria around the NHS masks etc. Perhaps not forcing staff out if they refused the vaccines might have helped – then given the NHS IC beds were offered to the French was there ever an NHS overwhelmed crisis? Not according to some family members who actually worked there during the pandemic
The best one can say about the NHS is the outsourcing bits work well, what’s left may just pass muster as an Emergency service
Here’s a start – a close family member, a senior surgeon, only found out that he’d been working 1.5x the average, in his dept, for the same salary, once he became director of surgery & so had access to the numbers. For years the managers had been too weak to sort this out, and just allowed the lazy ones to get away with it – at direct cost to the hard workers. This is entirely typical of NHS ‘management’.
I am not sure if junior doctors are private contractors. They are still under training but when they have finished training they will be into quite big money. In line with the proverbial song “I want it now” in Charlies Chocolate Factory it appears very selfish to me.
Who need to “judge” it? Junior doctors are hot-footing it to Australia and Canada as soon as they can for the money. And good luck to them. This will keep happening until junior doctors gst pad more here. When the employer decides he’s had enough of losing his valuable employees, he’ll pay them more. Sorted; no “judgement” required.
But don’t worry. You just sit there and spend hours mulling over the complicated judgment you think is required.
How would you judge pay for an individual? The same way as everyone else does it across many industries – based on individual performance. It’s the norm: but you make it sound like it’s unmanageable.
There is nothing so unfair as the equal treatment of people with unequal capabilities. Treating a mass of people as one guarantees the lowest performance possible.
So what do you suggest?
I accept there are practical challenges here.
On the other hand, we’ve lived for at least five decades with a healthcare system in which junior doctors are massively overworked – I recall reports of 80 hour weeks being worked in the past – and there has been little serious effort made to rectify this. Quite how having overworked and tired doctors is safe for patients (and the doctors themselves) has always eluded me.
The fact that such things persist tells me the current system is poorly managed and structured and that something needs to change. As does the absurd cap on doctors training and persistent need to import labour. We need to recognise these things as the bugs that they are and not simply features.
I’m not going to attempt to work out how pay should be managed in the NHS. It’s not easy. But there are enough people employed already to do this. Probably too many.
I might observe here that there’s a massive bureaucracy already on hand to deal with the massive bureaucratic task ! But in my experience, massive bureaucracies create at least as many problems as they solve.
On “fairness” (a term which is never defined by those who use it), there is nothing particularly fair in my book about paying a large group of people the same regardless of their actual contribution.
Large organisations do this all the time. If you want answers to your questions, take the time look at how they do this. That would be better than asking others to explain it to you
We cannot make any judgement about their pay because we have no idea about cost of any NHS treatment.
Well, that’s an easy one. De-nationalise health industry and let the market (i.e. me and you and the doctors) sort out what their actual value is. What value they add.
The Doctors problem is having a monopoly employer the NHS. If they were self employed like real professionals – or Doctors in Europe -they would be paid the market rate.
GPs are the ultimate rent-seekers. They get paid for having us on their books whether they treat us or not. That’s why my GP (who works part-time) is ‘unable’ to provide an appointment within the next fortnight and can’t book one after that because ‘computer says no’.
‘Stuff their mouths with gold’, said Nye Bevan. ‘And every other orifice too!’, said Tony Blair, and proceeded to do just that.
If the private sector pay more how can the ideologue above criticise Capitalists? More to the point the NHS was 100 years behind Great Western Railway
Https:/www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/2370272.nhs-born-in-gwr-hospital/
The NHS is a sacred cow it needs putting down.It is also the means NOT the end, the end was health care free at the point of delivery AND it can’t even manage that.
As my 90 year old uncle observed during lockdown. We fought for an NHS to save us, not for us to save it
Hancock destroyed much of the hysteria around the NHS masks etc. Perhaps not forcing staff out if they refused the vaccines might have helped – then given the NHS IC beds were offered to the French was there ever an NHS overwhelmed crisis? Not according to some family members who actually worked there during the pandemic
The best one can say about the NHS is the outsourcing bits work well, what’s left may just pass muster as an Emergency service
Here’s a start – a close family member, a senior surgeon, only found out that he’d been working 1.5x the average, in his dept, for the same salary, once he became director of surgery & so had access to the numbers. For years the managers had been too weak to sort this out, and just allowed the lazy ones to get away with it – at direct cost to the hard workers. This is entirely typical of NHS ‘management’.
I am not sure if junior doctors are private contractors. They are still under training but when they have finished training they will be into quite big money. In line with the proverbial song “I want it now” in Charlies Chocolate Factory it appears very selfish to me.
Who need to “judge” it? Junior doctors are hot-footing it to Australia and Canada as soon as they can for the money. And good luck to them. This will keep happening until junior doctors gst pad more here. When the employer decides he’s had enough of losing his valuable employees, he’ll pay them more. Sorted; no “judgement” required.
But don’t worry. You just sit there and spend hours mulling over the complicated judgment you think is required.
How would you judge pay for an individual? The same way as everyone else does it across many industries – based on individual performance. It’s the norm: but you make it sound like it’s unmanageable.
There is nothing so unfair as the equal treatment of people with unequal capabilities. Treating a mass of people as one guarantees the lowest performance possible.
where did they dig up the prat who wrote this article. utter drivel from start to finish. as an employer i cant cut their tea breaks, slash their pay, torture, murder blah blah etc that this pseudo intellectual claims i can. i’m guessing he’s never had a proper job before, or indeed anything remotely resembling one. uni lecturer perhaps?
How sad when one considers how low we have come to be when it is at the very least improper, and in most cases illegal, to torture, murder and impoverish those in your employment. In the mind of the average leftist prole, that behavior is manifest in the comportment of management. Oh, to have lived the life of a shop keeper in Dickensian England.
You beat me to it. He has a 19th century idea of the powers of the boss. Try any of the things he lists and spend months in employment tribunals.
He went overboard, but what’s your evidence that conditions are getting better for workers? Stagnant wages, precarious contracts, money lost to landlords who do next to nothing for it. There is a working class in this country and just because it delivers food and serves coffee or stacks amazon warehouses (perhaps all whilst being university educated) doesn’t mean it should not have solidarity with those on the shrinking factory floors (shrinking because our government seems so happy for Britain to produce less and less of its own goods through fewer and fewer decent jobs for its own people)
He went overboard, but what’s your evidence that conditions are getting better for workers? Stagnant wages, precarious contracts, money lost to landlords who do next to nothing for it. There is a working class in this country and just because it delivers food and serves coffee or stacks amazon warehouses (perhaps all whilst being university educated) doesn’t mean it should not have solidarity with those on the shrinking factory floors (shrinking because our government seems so happy for Britain to produce less and less of its own goods through fewer and fewer decent jobs for its own people)
He’s an old-school ex-Oxford professor, steeped in Marxist ideology, as many of his counterparts at Oxbridge are/were and some ended up being outed as spies for the Soviet Union.
Cambridge did better, it must be said.
If you can see the above comment Steve, I’m now waiting for you to tell me what I am. A snivelling snowflake socialist no doubt, who doesn’t care about his own country?
Cambridge did better, it must be said.
If you can see the above comment Steve, I’m now waiting for you to tell me what I am. A snivelling snowflake socialist no doubt, who doesn’t care about his own country?
He’s a ‘literary theorist’, whatever that may be. I’m sure it’s a proper job.
How sad when one considers how low we have come to be when it is at the very least improper, and in most cases illegal, to torture, murder and impoverish those in your employment. In the mind of the average leftist prole, that behavior is manifest in the comportment of management. Oh, to have lived the life of a shop keeper in Dickensian England.
You beat me to it. He has a 19th century idea of the powers of the boss. Try any of the things he lists and spend months in employment tribunals.
He’s an old-school ex-Oxford professor, steeped in Marxist ideology, as many of his counterparts at Oxbridge are/were and some ended up being outed as spies for the Soviet Union.
He’s a ‘literary theorist’, whatever that may be. I’m sure it’s a proper job.
Some public sector workers have no right to strike. I think none of them should have that right, since they are employed by the public, who often can access no alternative service providers. If private sector workers strike, they harm their employers but the public can access alternative suppliers.
Unluckily for you most people recognise that doctors should be paid a proper amount and have decent working conditions and so support the strike – the more strikes succeed, the more likely it is that other sectors will follow suit and demand higher wages. Now *that’s* a tide that raises all boats. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/majority-of-public-support-junior-doctors-ahead-of-first-full-walkout-poll-shows-a7000751.html
I can imagine the dying words of untreated patients: ‘Pay the doctors more!’
And your explanation for the widespread public support of this strike? I can’t see the counter-example to this (‘Pay the doctors less so even more of them give up on the NHS and go private’) being the likelier scenario..
And your explanation for the widespread public support of this strike? I can’t see the counter-example to this (‘Pay the doctors less so even more of them give up on the NHS and go private’) being the likelier scenario..
I can imagine the dying words of untreated patients: ‘Pay the doctors more!’
Unluckily for you most people recognise that doctors should be paid a proper amount and have decent working conditions and so support the strike – the more strikes succeed, the more likely it is that other sectors will follow suit and demand higher wages. Now *that’s* a tide that raises all boats. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/majority-of-public-support-junior-doctors-ahead-of-first-full-walkout-poll-shows-a7000751.html
Spoken like a 1 percenter.
Sadly not.
But if I were, I’d be paying a shedload of tax supporting government spending and public services. I suggest you check again the real breakdown of tax contributions versus income bands before you go on insulting the people who pay the bills.
Pay the bills you say? Hmm, maybe there wouldn’t be strikes OR giant holes in national budgets if the top 1(0)% actually paid what they owe, as opposed to squirrelling it away in tax havens or using it for tax free “philanthropy” (i.e. influence operations or legal slush funds).
Also, I find it funny that you speak of insulting people when you come across like some medieval lord complaining about his ungrateful serfs in that comment, apparently assuming that everyone should be there at your beck and call.
Not everyone works in tech and gets money stuffed down their gullet.
However, that doesn’t mean people who don’t make 100k or whatever don’t deserve a living wage and decent working conditions, even if you’ve never been in a situation where you had to fight for that.
You know nothing about me, my history or circumstances. It’s unwise to make so many assumptions about other people’s beliefs and situation. There are numerous errors in what you assumed about me. I could tell you that my father was unemployed for 2 years when I was at school, but I suspect you wouldn’t believe me.
You know nothing about me, my history or circumstances. It’s unwise to make so many assumptions about other people’s beliefs and situation. There are numerous errors in what you assumed about me. I could tell you that my father was unemployed for 2 years when I was at school, but I suspect you wouldn’t believe me.
Pay the bills you say? Hmm, maybe there wouldn’t be strikes OR giant holes in national budgets if the top 1(0)% actually paid what they owe, as opposed to squirrelling it away in tax havens or using it for tax free “philanthropy” (i.e. influence operations or legal slush funds).
Also, I find it funny that you speak of insulting people when you come across like some medieval lord complaining about his ungrateful serfs in that comment, apparently assuming that everyone should be there at your beck and call.
Not everyone works in tech and gets money stuffed down their gullet.
However, that doesn’t mean people who don’t make 100k or whatever don’t deserve a living wage and decent working conditions, even if you’ve never been in a situation where you had to fight for that.
Sadly not.
But if I were, I’d be paying a shedload of tax supporting government spending and public services. I suggest you check again the real breakdown of tax contributions versus income bands before you go on insulting the people who pay the bills.
Typical neo-liberal nonsense, that denies the collective, social nature of work, in pursuit of greed and profit. As a trade unionist and university lecturer now retired I spent years fighting this clap trap that sought to reduce academics to the parlous state that private industry has succeeded in doing as a consequence of breaking the unions.
Divide and rule has always been the way of the bosses if they could get away with it. And get away with it they have for far too long. Doctors, nurses, ambulance workers, teachers, academics, railway workers, civil servants, BT engineers and more are finally discovering the collective power of the mass.
This advantage should not be squandered. The greed this government oversees rewarding their corporate cronies in the private sector despite their underperformance needs to be reversed so that all the workers can be paid a decent living wage. And this will only be achieved through such struggle as mass strikes.
The Guardian reported the Health Secretary claiming the 26% pay demand by junior doctors was unaffordable because it would add ÂŁ2bln to the public purse that would threaten the government’s efforts to control inflation. But the Defence Secretary has been given another ÂŁ2bln to replenish ammunition stocks that have been shipped off to Ukraine. A more perverse moral logic you could not make up, even if you tried. Inflation is acceptable when it comes to killing people in Ukraine, but unacceptable when it comes to paying the people who save lives and treat the sick in the UK!
The article is anti- capitalist, which makes me laugh. Capitalism is just barter. There is no other way of valuing human endeavour.
Striking is bartering but it does hold the whole public to ransom when it comes to essential public services.
What will junior doctors think of future generations of doctors who ask for more pay and less work than their predecessors, when they’re older and need more medical services? Why don’t they realise that the more they get for less work, the less doctors a free public system can afford to hire………
The reasons that Australian doctors are better paid and health insurance is more affordable is that it is a mixed public/private system with more money per capita going into healthcare.
If Cuba can provide the most number of doctors per capita than any other country in the world, despite the criminal blockade and sanctions the US imposes on it, then this bogus argument about public/ private is just not credible.
If we have money to waste on killing people in Ukraine then we should not even be having this debate. There is plenty money. This country is awash with money, We are the seventh richest country in the world. Yet we put up with government that imposes a scarcity of medical resources on the public because it does not really believe health care is a public good. If it could get away with privatising it, it would.
Our government looks to the failing health care rip off system in the US as its preferred model where the health care corporations and their oligarchs make a killing at the expense of the public.
Private health care is an insult to humanity and an ethical abomination. It should be banned. If Cuba can provide doctors to serve its own public, with spare to provide essential humanitarian aid abroad, then so can the UK.
If Cuba can provide the most number of doctors per capita than any other country in the world, despite the criminal blockade and sanctions the US imposes on it, then this bogus argument about public/ private is just not credible.
If we have money to waste on killing people in Ukraine then we should not even be having this debate. There is plenty money. This country is awash with money, We are the seventh richest country in the world. Yet we put up with government that imposes a scarcity of medical resources on the public because it does not really believe health care is a public good. If it could get away with privatising it, it would.
Our government looks to the failing health care rip off system in the US as its preferred model where the health care corporations and their oligarchs make a killing at the expense of the public.
Private health care is an insult to humanity and an ethical abomination. It should be banned. If Cuba can provide doctors to serve its own public, with spare to provide essential humanitarian aid abroad, then so can the UK.
How would you judge the annual individual pay for a doctor or nurse if you moved away from national pay scales? What metrics, what system, how much time and energy would you spend on this? How many disputes would arise about unfairness etc etc? Junior doctors rotate through their placements and organisations. So we resetting what we pay them every few months? Massive bureaucratic task.
Your point has some theoretical interest, but massively impractical even if we like a bit of the principle.
Bear in mind also GP are private contractors – there is something though in the mechanism via which they are paid. Debate for another time perhaps
where did they dig up the prat who wrote this article. utter drivel from start to finish. as an employer i cant cut their tea breaks, slash their pay, torture, murder blah blah etc that this pseudo intellectual claims i can. i’m guessing he’s never had a proper job before, or indeed anything remotely resembling one. uni lecturer perhaps?
Some public sector workers have no right to strike. I think none of them should have that right, since they are employed by the public, who often can access no alternative service providers. If private sector workers strike, they harm their employers but the public can access alternative suppliers.
Spoken like a 1 percenter.
Typical neo-liberal nonsense, that denies the collective, social nature of work, in pursuit of greed and profit. As a trade unionist and university lecturer now retired I spent years fighting this clap trap that sought to reduce academics to the parlous state that private industry has succeeded in doing as a consequence of breaking the unions.
Divide and rule has always been the way of the bosses if they could get away with it. And get away with it they have for far too long. Doctors, nurses, ambulance workers, teachers, academics, railway workers, civil servants, BT engineers and more are finally discovering the collective power of the mass.
This advantage should not be squandered. The greed this government oversees rewarding their corporate cronies in the private sector despite their underperformance needs to be reversed so that all the workers can be paid a decent living wage. And this will only be achieved through such struggle as mass strikes.
The Guardian reported the Health Secretary claiming the 26% pay demand by junior doctors was unaffordable because it would add ÂŁ2bln to the public purse that would threaten the government’s efforts to control inflation. But the Defence Secretary has been given another ÂŁ2bln to replenish ammunition stocks that have been shipped off to Ukraine. A more perverse moral logic you could not make up, even if you tried. Inflation is acceptable when it comes to killing people in Ukraine, but unacceptable when it comes to paying the people who save lives and treat the sick in the UK!
The article is anti- capitalist, which makes me laugh. Capitalism is just barter. There is no other way of valuing human endeavour.
Striking is bartering but it does hold the whole public to ransom when it comes to essential public services.
What will junior doctors think of future generations of doctors who ask for more pay and less work than their predecessors, when they’re older and need more medical services? Why don’t they realise that the more they get for less work, the less doctors a free public system can afford to hire………
The reasons that Australian doctors are better paid and health insurance is more affordable is that it is a mixed public/private system with more money per capita going into healthcare.
“Nobody objects to the right to withhold oneâs labour”.
Actually, I do. I do not accept that this is an absolute right without any corresponding responsibilities.
If you are a professional and have signed an employment contract to deliver services in return for a salary, then you have accepted responsiblity to deliver those services to the terms of the contract. You also have responsibilities to customers and co-workers.
Of course, if you don’t care about professionalism and taking your responsibilities seriously, that need not concern you.
In my view, it is extremely unwise for professionals like doctors to strike since it fundamentally undermines the professional ethos expected from them. Reputations take years to build and moments to destroy.
Having said all that, I can imagine that in practice it’s not an easy decision for teachers – for example – whether to strike.
But the fundamental reason they lack any negotatiating power is that they still insist on being treated as a mass and not as individuals as in private industry. If they accepted regional/local pay based on individual performance without things like automatic progression pay every year (this apparently still exists in the NHS), then a lot of the problems would go away. Except for the fact that lower performing employees would be paid less.
Since the public sector unions still insist that lower performing employees must be paid the same as higher performers and that they cannot be fired (drunk on the job train drivers seem impossible to dismiss), I suggest that the unions as they currently exist are archaic.
I didn’t realise that commenters would have their ramblings published as articles. It’s sixth form stuff, completely incoherent. How did this load of garbled nonsense get past the editors?
I don’t disagree with the first few paragraphs but from “The history of the British working-class…” it reads like mental diarrhoea.
Terence Francis Eagleton FBA[4] (born 22 February 1943) is an English literary theorist, critic, and public intellectual.[5][6][7][8] He is currently Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University. Eagleton has published over forty books, but remains best known for Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), which has sold over 750,000 copies.[9]
Would it be fair to say that: His is the archetypal Public Sector parasite who has contributed virtually nothing to the public good yet has plundered system on a titanic scale thanks to his fantastic pension? And all through no fault of his own?
You mean like all the bankers we bailed out?
Except for one short word: GREED.
Except for one short word: GREED.
No. Although that certainly describes most of the capitalist elite. Presumably Terry can survive on income from his books, and Charles survives in part on his pension.
If we are going to talk about runaway pension entitlements maybe we should concentrate not, or not just, on the public sector which is being reformed, but in the generation that made off like gangbusters with the triple lock. About whom the octogenarians on Unherd donât seem to be so pushed about.
In many cases, including my own that would be rather too hypocritical, but you are perfectly correct.
In many cases, including my own that would be rather too hypocritical, but you are perfectly correct.
No it would not. Would it be fair to say that you’re a troll? He’s a university professor who works in one of those places where new knowledge is generated and culture is preserved, but hey, who cares about that crap? What do you mean by ‘public sector parasite’? Are all public sector workers parasites? What does ‘plundered the system’ actually mean? His book on literary theory has been very influential and an important contribution to literature studies but hey, what’s the point of studying literature?
Calm down Ms Hamlyn you ONLY demean yourself by such vulgarity, do you not? And to think you claim to be a University Lecturer, need I say more?
However to indulge you, culture may have been preserved and ânew knowledge generatedâ in some, in fact very few of our plethora of Universities, but frankly most should be closed.
No, not all Public Sector Workers are parasites but an enormous number obviously are and this must cease.
âPlundered the systemâ translates as doing very little if any work, yet claiming a decent salary and in all cases a fantastic pension, with the extraordinary bonus of being virtually unsackable.
I dare say Eagletonâs book on Literary Theory is a notable tome but is rather niche is it not? As to why one should study Literature, you tell me.
ps: How is your little spat over speciality/specialty going with Steve Murray? (of this Parish.)
Calm down Ms Hamlyn you ONLY demean yourself by such vulgarity, do you not? And to think you claim to be a University Lecturer, need I say more?
However to indulge you, culture may have been preserved and ânew knowledge generatedâ in some, in fact very few of our plethora of Universities, but frankly most should be closed.
No, not all Public Sector Workers are parasites but an enormous number obviously are and this must cease.
âPlundered the systemâ translates as doing very little if any work, yet claiming a decent salary and in all cases a fantastic pension, with the extraordinary bonus of being virtually unsackable.
I dare say Eagletonâs book on Literary Theory is a notable tome but is rather niche is it not? As to why one should study Literature, you tell me.
ps: How is your little spat over speciality/specialty going with Steve Murray? (of this Parish.)
You mean like all the bankers we bailed out?
No. Although that certainly describes most of the capitalist elite. Presumably Terry can survive on income from his books, and Charles survives in part on his pension.
If we are going to talk about runaway pension entitlements maybe we should concentrate not, or not just, on the public sector which is being reformed, but in the generation that made off like gangbusters with the triple lock. About whom the octogenarians on Unherd donât seem to be so pushed about.
No it would not. Would it be fair to say that you’re a troll? He’s a university professor who works in one of those places where new knowledge is generated and culture is preserved, but hey, who cares about that crap? What do you mean by ‘public sector parasite’? Are all public sector workers parasites? What does ‘plundered the system’ actually mean? His book on literary theory has been very influential and an important contribution to literature studies but hey, what’s the point of studying literature?
Would it be fair to say that: His is the archetypal Public Sector parasite who has contributed virtually nothing to the public good yet has plundered system on a titanic scale thanks to his fantastic pension? And all through no fault of his own?
I conclude from this that you can barely read. Irony?
The trouble is that I can and have. My (very modest) criticism was that he could and should have stopped half way through and the article would have been better for it.
Nice try. I upvoted you.
The trouble is that I can and have. My (very modest) criticism was that he could and should have stopped half way through and the article would have been better for it.
Nice try. I upvoted you.
Terence Francis Eagleton FBA[4] (born 22 February 1943) is an English literary theorist, critic, and public intellectual.[5][6][7][8] He is currently Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University. Eagleton has published over forty books, but remains best known for Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), which has sold over 750,000 copies.[9]
I conclude from this that you can barely read. Irony?
I didn’t realise that commenters would have their ramblings published as articles. It’s sixth form stuff, completely incoherent. How did this load of garbled nonsense get past the editors?
I don’t disagree with the first few paragraphs but from “The history of the British working-class…” it reads like mental diarrhoea.
As usual there is much spoken about the current series of disputes – much of it WRONG.
The latest was:
NEWLY QUALIFIED – Junior Doctors:
”A (Junior) Doctor earns the same as a Barista (coffee not the other one) – this is not true. a simple online check shows Costa Coffee Baristas are paid less than or around ÂŁ10 an hour – not the same as a Jr Doc Starting Salary at all. – also a Jr Doc salary has an upward career path. I imagine a Barista stays the same.
”Newly Qualified” comment:
I heard someone on the radio just this week saying
”I am on ÂŁ14 yes (I dont know if that was true or not obviously) and I have to pay ÂŁ5.80 per day tube fare”
”then the cheapest meal for lunch in the canteen is (cant remember exactly) ÂŁ4”
– plus I have to be the first on-call and I get asked to do overtime – Plus I get all the ”dogsbody” jobs.
Awww how terrible – the key point here is ”You are Newly Qualified” – also in my day, we used to make our own lunch and take that with us to work…….. What happened to that strange idea?
Tax-Payers:
I am not saying these people dont deserve a pay rise – but there are lots of TAX-Payers who have to pay for yoru salary from theirs and they too have probably (in the main) suffered a real terms pay cut.
Bravo! Well said.
And the ÂŁ22bn* of our money being pumped directly into the hands of landlords via rental allowance? I suppose that money is well worth it? OR we could support the strikers in trying to move us towards a high wage economy where employers pay workers properly (i.e. where no one has to rely on state support to help them pay for overpriced private rental accomodation) and then hard work rather than asset hoarding can become a real route out of poverty.
*https://propertyindustryeye.com/housing-benefits-costs-taxpayers-22bn-a-year-more-than-we-spend-on-police/
Great, take away housing benefit then.
Fair play! Already got 4 million working people living in poverty – what’s another million?
https://www.jrf.org.uk/data/overall-uk-poverty-rates#:~:text=In%202020%2F21%2C%20around%20one,living%20in%20poverty%20(27%25).
What poverty exactly?
Itâs all relative, just because âtheyâ canât get as âpissed as a fartâ every night of the week is hardly poverty in the old sense of the word is it?
Indeed it is relative, as the Rowntree website makes clear, but the point is that in the 5th wealthiest economy in the world (though soon destined to be as poor as Poland we are often told), ordinary people should not be getting poorer (often to the benefit of those enjoying record profits, and in ways far disprortionate to their efforts or services for others – speculators, landowners, investers etc). It is not merely material deprivation though, but the sense of ownership people are losing over their lives doing menial low-skill jobs (supermarkets, amazon warehouses etc) that can’t provide them with a sense of pride or purpose in the way that skilled industrial jobs used to for the lower classes. Additionally, having a lot of disenfranchised people around makes us vulnerable to the seductions of demagogues. What do you say to that?
https://www.jrf.org.uk/our-work/what-is-poverty
PS getting pissed on no money at all has been possible ever since supermarkets were first allowed to sell alcohol in 1962
Come on Charles, holding out hopes for you as a Blue Labourite who believes in a strong, productive Britain that rewards work over wealth, need over demand and doesn’t want to let our families, communities and town centres get torn apart by the ravages of the market..
Working Class pride was destroyed eons ago by âSocial Servicesâ, â Town Plannersâ and countless other socialist busybodies trying to create some form of pseudo Marxist Utopia.
Then State Education tried to destroy their sense of National pride by âguilt trippingâ them over arrant nonsense about slavery, Empire etc.
As Orwell pointed out there nothing a Quislington socialist despises more than the Working class. All that whoring, drinking, dog fighting and general exuberance was just TOO much for them, and still is.
However let us rejoice, despite this socialist onslaught, it didnât work!
âTheyâ voted for Brexit, Boris and given half a chance would bring back the Gallows.
Twice in the last century âtheyâ have saved us and shall do so again, so poverty be damned!
Ok you haven’t really answered my question about whether you think living standards are going in a good direction in this country and on what the possible ramifications/solutions might be, but I’ll address your points in any case.
Yes the left does not have a completely shining record on its treatment of the working class, even the slum clearances resulted in some disruption to traditional ways of life. But those town planners (I assume you mean the ones who built the high rises in the 60s?) also helped create a surge in low-rise council housing before Thatcher started selling them off to leave the remaining publicly-owned blocks ghettos of alienation and abandonment.
Not sure what nonesense about slavery you’re talking about. As a history teacher I can tell you that schools teach that slavery is a universal human problem common to all Empires and that while there are many good things our Empire gave the world, we need to acknowledge its faults. Though I am intrigued that over stagnant wages, the breaking of unions, the rising of rents and the dying of skilled labour you choose the two hours a week of history lessons received by working class children as the experience that most damaged working class pride since the 60s.
Not an Orwell quote I’ve heard of. He was a patriotic socialist of the kind I had hoped to find in you, but instead all I’ve found (so far) is self-satisfied bluster and incoherence, though I do envy your optimism.
‘Poverty, be damned!’ So here do you mean that so long as the working classes are voting for things like Brexit and the gallows, we can assume they’re alright and there’s no poverty to speak of? And who and what policies then for you have and are now going to ‘save us’? What has been the big pay off? I genuinely would like to have some reason for hope. Will ripping up our commitment to human rights in order to stop these 45,000 ‘invaders’ (people generally fleeing oppression and war) finally bring us this bright future the Tories have been working on delivering us these last 12 years? What’s your favourite Tory policy and how has it improved your life and the lives of ordinary people in this country?
Well and in reverse order if I may, I do not have a âfavourite Tory policyâ for the very simple reason there havenât been any. As for the improvement in the lives of ordinary people there havenât been any. In fact given the appalling response to the COVID nonsense there are unlikely be to any for a very considerable time.
The âinvasionâ of 45,000 is neither here nor there. The damage has already been done, as was foretold by âyou know whoâ many years ago. We have had the âflashâ and now we must await the âbangâ.
As to poverty! What a splendid old chestnut, which can be distorted to mean almost anything. Poverty of opportunity, poverty intellect, poverty of housing, poverty of culture and so it goes on. However as I first voted in the General Election of 1959 I have seen the almost total banishment of material poverty as we used to know it. Unfortunately the perception of poverty is all often used to feed that âgreen eyed gremlinâ; Envy. Perhaps you havenât noticed this?
The Orwell reference is from the wartime essay entitled âThe Lion and the Unicorn â, and I am astonished that you havenât heard of it.
The destruction of working class pride I blame almost entirely on Education, and in particular Comprehensive Education, about which, and for the sake of brevity, all one can say is that it is Comprehensively dreadful! Why was the destruction of the Grammar Schools permitted, other than for reasons ideological socialist dogma, well annunciated by that cretin Tony Crosland and his famous expletive âF*ck the Grammar Schoolsâ! Charming and Oxford man at that!
Rather sadly the Tories were also complicit by their apathy.
However this is not to completely exculpate the âMediaâ and in particular the BBC who have played their part in the vilification of the English working class, and more specifically the dreaded âWhite Van Manâ, who is normally portrayed as a monosyllabic fascist thug who is beyond redemption.
So, there we have it. Fortunately I have already passed the âfinishing postâ so this is all rather academic now, but I am grateful that I at least have spent my life in a âgreen and pleasant landâ.