iansums

You know full well what he meant. The government are torn between keeping the left wing of their party happy whilst dealing with the reality of managing an economy.

They leaked proposals to the press, saw them get a hammering and changed their minds. They don't have the courage of their convictions, we've see it throughout the past 18 months.

What a dithering bunch they are. After the last Tory government (Sunak/Hunt) were steadying the ship after Covid and the cost of living crisis (and Truss), this lot are really fucking things up big time.

You did do drugs pretty heavily though didn’t you? It’s an interesting point with means testing of pensions. There are lots of people who are careful with their money, put what they can afford into a private pension building up a decent pot, then they would get punished if means testing was brought in.

I have two rules in life: 1. Don't trust anyone with loads of tatoos 2. Don't trust anyone who dyes their hair red

The minimum wage is a good thing, I think we can all agree on that. The problem is that the last increase along with the employer NI hike ended up making it more expensive for employers to take on or retain staff, especially when they have seen other costs go up. When the economy is more buoyant then that is the time to make significant increases to the minimum wage. My problem with this government is that they are not helping small and medium size businesses in order to achieve growth.

Just caught the tail end of BBC news where some reporter was talking about this, she gave her personal opinion on Tim Davie and the BBC Chairman. It’s the news FFS, you report the news, it’s not a vehicle to give your opinion.

Excellent, struggle to think of anything more worthy.

Form an orderly queue please, I’m at the front.

The unholy trinity?

I’ll swap places with you Turks

No idea mate, don’t know much about it, but if it brings the numbers down and upsets you then I’m all for it.

We agree on something Mr Egg! The triple lock has to end at some point, it’s unsustainable, and I’m someone who’ll be retiring within the next 10 years. It’ll be a brave party that says they’ll do it.

Home Secretary getting tough on immigration, looking to follow the Danish system. Well done to her, but it won’t go down well with the left wing if her party.

I missed that, what was the charity?

A left-wing activist with big tits, your ideal woman.

I was very sceptical about ths show but the Mrs and I decided to watch this one and thoroughly enjoyed it. However, this was mainly due to some of the celebraties, such as Alan Carr, Joe Marler and a few others who made it very funny at times. They do drag it out though, it could be condensed into 20 minutes. Typical modern TV though, taking the public for idiots, after 4 votes, 'let's take a vote count' because we all suffer from short term memory loss. And when did 'locking' in your answer become a thing on every TV game show? Great programme, but not sure I would bother with the non-celebrity version.

Why is it a false comparison?

Yes, I realise that, any change would be over many years. I'm not necesarily proposing it just discussing the relative merits of private/public sector pensions and pay.

You definitley do. I know the country needs public services, of course it does, and those people should be rewarded fairly for the work they do. I am just comparing pay/pensions in the private/public sectors.

I think you mis-understand. I am talking in general terms, not about specific roles. I think someone earlier mentioned about lower pay in the public sector (pay peanuts, get monkeys).

Not sure what you mean by this? I was just trying to say that in the public sector, you may receive a lower salary but would have a better pension. In the private sector, yes you may receive a higher salary but you would get far less pension contribution from your employer and so have to fund more of it yourself.

So this the trade off then, work in the public sector for lower pay but better pensions.

But wouldn’t you prefer a higher salary and less going into your pension? Especially when you are younger, have a mortgage, kids etc. Just read that teachers automatically pay from about 7% rising to 12% dependant on salary and the employer pays 28%.

Your usual mocking response. I would actually like to see public sector pensions brought more in line with the private sector. I’m sure many would prefer to see a higher wage than the relatively large amount going into their pensions.