Johnny Bognor

I think that will be the issue for public services with headcounts being reduced through natural wastage. No one wil lose their jobs (unlike the private sector), but those that are left to cover for those who leave will have to work harder / will endure more work stress / service levels suffer.

Good, I hope he sets his opportunity clock every morning :-) I agree, too many chiefs, leave the indians alone In an SME, in a word 'no' as poor managers get found out too easily. In large corporates, it is easier for them to hide and can get away with it for much longer, so it normally takes a major cull before they go. In the Public Sector it is very difficult to get rid of people, it is in the culture, which means that they can pretty much stay put and carry on regardless. That's my opninion FWIW There have already been 1 million victims of the credit crisis / recession and we are not through the woods yet. Many of my clients are overseas / London based, but I have a number of connections with the local print industry in Chichester. In the last 6 months, we've lost RPM and Sussex Litho which have both been local family businesses for 30+ years. Many of the staff (who now have no job) were employed for much of this period. It is very sad to see an established employer dissappear where more than half the staff haven't got a hope of getting another job anytime soon. So there have been many forgotton victims already (as much of this Forum and the Media focus has been on the Public Sector). I hope and think the indians will be OK, the chiefs need to take the pain.

Nah, I am lucky where I can post my opinions based on fact, reason and common sense. I am not restricted by towing any party line, political dogma or outdated views in a modern age. I am the future......

Hamster, the world has turned on its head. A neo-con like me is fending for the low paid against the better paid public sector socialists. Who'd have thought it eh? (Nick and the Lib Dems have a lot to answer for) Two sugars please.

OK, fair enough, crossed wires. You were talking about lost jobs. Since summer 2008, unemployment has risen by ONE MILLION (and it's still rising). I would suggest that nearly all of them will have been from the private sector, with the obvious exceptions like one of your best mate's nan's 2nd cousin twice removed. Unfortunately it is the lower paid workers that have taken the brunt of this, but as long as you and the others in the public sector are OK, ****'em.

I suppose they could follow Labour's philosophy and borrow money they don't have to pay the workers, but unfortunately that money has to be paid back. My Mum was a nurse for the best part of 35 years and my auntie a midwife for a similar period. I have nothing against public sector workers, with exception to the ones that moan they are so ****ing hard done by....."playing the victim" card as Dune put it earlier. If they actually admitted they had it pretty cushy, then I would hold my hands up and say fair play. I despise people who moan about something, when they have little to moan about (Public or Private sector, hence my stance on BA cabin crew, who also have it so cushy when compared to their counterparts). As for comparisons on pay, I can quote any major paper (incl the Groaniad) and any published source out there. The best you can come up with is your best mates 2nd cousin twice removed or BTF going on about hospital cleaners. Cheers R&RM No 2. Many of the lefties are adamant in defending public sector workers, but there are millions of underpaid and ill treated workers in the private sector who don't seem to have any sympathy from the intellectual socialists. I am far from a socialist but I feel I have to speak up for these under represented people. They deserve so much more as they are the first to feel any pain from a downturn but rarely get the benefit of an upturn, but at least they get off their arses and try and earn a living....they have my respect.

That is of course if they are not part of the 1 million+ people who have lost their jobs in the last few years.

R&RM No2, not sure I agree here. Anyone earning under £21k in he public sector will get a guaranteed £250 year on year increase for the next three years and the majority of those people you describe will benefit from this. Most of the people in the private sector will not have such guarantees, will be thankful if they even still have a job in three years time and that is without taking pensions into account. Over 240,000 people in the UK earn less than the minimum wage and I'll wager that none of them will work in Public Services. I will also wager that more people in the private sector are on the minimum wage when compared to the Public Sector. Unfortunately the millions of hotel workers, bar workers, retail staff, agricultural workers, manual unskilled labourers and the armies of underpaid workers will have little sympathy with your plight.

England can drop them off on their way home

That covers Dune's ticket tax at 1 ticket per week :-)

Eh? Government statistics (which were compiled under labour) are now ammunition for the Tory press. Could it be that the statistics show the last lot up for what they were and their performance doesn't exactly make the Tory press have to work to hard or to dig too deep? The truth gets told and it is dismissed as propaganda. Pray tell me, where do the Guardian get their facts from?

It would be fairer for the public sector....but it conveniently omits the lowest paid in society who work in the private sector where there is not an equivalent post. How many tomato and pepper pickers work in the public sector? Jesus, here's me sticking up for the lowest paid in society and you want to take an "I'm alright jack, because I'm in the Public Sector, **** the rest attitude". I thought socialists were supposed to stick up for all working people, not just their own......

So BTF, are you saying that all low paid workers were once in the Public Sector???? Codswallop. Maybe a very very small minority. The bulk of underpaid people include cleaners, shelf stackers, tomato pickers, nursery school workers, shop floor workers, temps etc, etc, etc, many of whom have never been anywhere near the public sector. Stop trying to find an example of one person you know, then apply it to the whole of the UK in to justify your argument. You'll be going on about hospital cleaning contracts in minute.......

See: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloa...9/2009_pps.pdf Then download table 13.7a The Public Sector are better paid in every percentile, excluding the top 20% of all earners, which has been the case since 1984. (This does not take account of job security, pensions, holidays, paid sick and all the other benefits enjoyed by public sector workers). Also, in table 13.9a, private sector workers work more hours in every percentile when compared to public sector workers, so we move on to table 13.5a which shows: 1. The bottom 10% of earners in the private sector earn £5.99 per hour (compared to £7.34 in the public sector) 2. If you are a middle earner in the private sector you get £11.84 compared to £14.95 in the public sector 3. In the top 10% of earners, the average private sector worker enjoys £24.29 per hour which is LESS than the top 10% in the public sector who get £24.77 per hour. So, in the interests of fairness, the public sector should take their "FAIR" share of the pain. Does the office for National Statistics count?

Any of the usual suspects on here want to give George some credit for taking nearly 900,000 people out of income taxation altogether????? I for one applaud it as hard working / low paid workers need to be given a break. It won't help many in the public sector as they earn more than the new threshold, but I think working people should get a break over non-working people....... It is the start of incentivising people to get off benefits and do something.

That's all if's, could's and maybe's based on something that may or may not happen written by someone who has a vested interest.

Indeed, before the credit crisis / recession, we were running a £60 Billion deficit.

Hey, I am not so blind that I don't see what is going on. For me, a business should make it as easy as possible to enable customers to transact with them. The cost argument for not offering installments doesn't hold water - they could simply add any costs to the overall cost, which would be spread with installments (this is ignoring your research into available installment plans). Selling ST's also helps the business in terms of cash flow and reducing overall ticketing costs as seats are sold in bulk. Anyway this has all been done to death, but I am sympathetic to your view. Surely the club has to pay for the free steward tickets which adds an additional cost that I had not thought of. If that is one steward per coach, with 50 people on it, then that is nearly £0.50 per head, a cost that you did not have. I help organise a real ale and jazz festival which raises funds for a Cricket and Hockey club which heavily relies on volunteer support. If you 'costed' the volunteer support, then the money raised would be far less. This can apply to your organising coaches where you were not salaried and had it been costed properly, the gap between your ticket price and the club's ticket price would have been much smaller. You may be able to do it for less, but the gap will be smaller than you think.

To be fair to the club, they would have had overheads that you did not. For example, the staff organising the travel would have been salaried and I am sure as an 'official' travel provider, liability insurance would have had to been paid by the club.....what if one of your coaches crashed and someone died, as the organiser, would you have been covered? These overheads might not completely cover the £5 per head, but the difference between your costs and those of the club are different.

They do, but when you stand on a moral ticket, it helps if you live your life by your morals. Had she stood for ****ging about, it would not have been so bad. If I was Dave, I would sack the hypocrite.

I discussed this at length with NC a while ago. http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=15203

The US system is the most widely used (esepcially by the scientific community). However it is not as logical as the British definition where a billion (bi meaning two) has twice as many zeros as a million. Therefore our Billion is a US Trillion and the US billion is only 1000 million.

T-shirts emblazoned with "These colours don't run"

The poor always suffer in economic downturns. They are due to announce that unemployment will go above the 3m mark today (which funnily enough is the amount always quoted by the lefties as being caused by Maggie). Do you think that the poor have escaped this time round? Nope, they will suffer as much now as they did then. That's nothing to do with Thatcher as she has long gone, it is the way of the world (rightly or wrongly). I disagree, as I neither hate her or love her. I expect that I am in the majority. She did some good/necessary things and she also ****ed up (as do all Prime Ministers). I describe her as a necessary evil. Funnily enough, it seems that the nutty right and the nutty left on here are the only ones that either love her or hate her.

Of course our friends in the US are clearly unreasonable, as they clung to monetarism until September 1982. Luckily countries like the USA (world's largest economy at the time), and Germany (the other major powerhouse) also suffered recessions in 1980, as did Ireland, Canada, Japan, China, India and New Zealand (Couldn't be bothered to look for any more as my point is made). Yep, blame it all on Maggie, it was all her fault.