badgerx16

The Treasury is estimated to have spent £27Bn propping up the Pound during the 1992 crisis. And as for the mess 'inherited', try reading the other current discussion on this thread, you may actually learn something if you remove your blinkers for a minute.

And of course 'Black Wednesday' was down to Labour's mismanagement of the economy, wasn't it ? £3.4 Bn down the drain due to Tory incompetence. George Soros saw it coming, so why not the Treasury ?

Don't leave yourself open to such easy ripostes : If the public weren't so gullible Maggie would have only served one term. Labour were in power for 13 years for the same reason the Tories were in for too long before them - voter apathy and the venal failings of FPTP.

Are we now, de facto, 'allied' to the opposition ? We seem to be clearing the road for them. Also, as put to the head of NATO this morning, and he tried all he could to avoid a straight question, does anybody think that if the rebels were to threaten civilians in some or other way, we would start bombing them, as the UN resolution dictates ? I rather suspect we would find any excuse to avoid it.

Trying to get back to the core discussion of the thread, what was the point of the 1p off fuel duty ? I went past a garage today where it's gone UP 3p per litre since Friday morning. An utterly pointless piece of propaganda posing by Georgie Porgie which the press fawningly spewed all over their front pages - "Britain you can drive your car, beep, beep, yeah" as the Sun put it.

no more

imperialism

If your 'field' were in the public sector, than the raving right on here would justify this on the grounds that they were overpaid 'bloat' and the cut was making them more 'efficient'.

trouble

That's democracy for you, ( or at least the FPTP version ), sometimes the other person's view holds sway, and you just have to accept it.

But you are also hamstrung as to that input, as it is strictly controlled by the Exchequer. The public sector lack the commercial flexibility of private companies, who can put on a penny here or there if they can accept the risk that the consumer will bear it, or can decide to up sticks and transfer production to Thailand or China. The point being debated is the relative merit and level of salaries in both sectors, and that fact is that for my specific job, a technical and professional role with the necessary qualifications and experience, the private sector pays more, and this is the case for most roles where a direct comparison can be made.

company

But what private company is anywhere near as complex, or open to public scrutiny, as Birmingham City Council ? Also, Councils don't have the ability to pick and choose their markets or customers.

We've done this to death previously - on a 'like for like' basis public sector workers doing similar jobs to the private sector, generally earn less. Certainly I would be paid quite a bit more doing exactly the same job for a private company, as can easily be evidenced by perusing job adverts. ( The fact that I choose not to is my decision ). The 'average' figure for the public sector is swollen by including such people as teachers. Even at the top this probably holds true, despite the hysteria over Local Authority Ch Execs' pay - in the private sector, if you ran a company with a turnover of £300 million+ and employed 10,000 staff, what would you expect to get paid ?

The vast majority of council staff work a minimum 37 hour week, get at most 31 days leave, and most earn less than £20k pa. And of course, there aren't any unions in the private sector, are there ?

Adding more to the 'squeezed middle'.

That still leaves poor old Grubb. Far more efficient on the public purse to have 1 man doing the work of 6. As back to the Budget, will these new economic development zones lead to another round of what we saw under Thatcher - companies that don't actually create 'new' jobs, but instead migrate their factories and facilities around the country looking for the most advantageous incentives, like some new form of capitalist 'travellers'.

I am, at this very moment, filling in the application to apply to retain my own public sector job, due to a 40% reduction in numbers at my grade within my unit. Not through cutting 'bloat', but because the BrokeBacks have cut our budget by 28% wef April 1st - I may be 2 weeks from redundancy from a post that I most certainly DO think operates efficiently And I think that anybody who believes the bullsh!t assertion that the public sector IS bloated is themselves mental - all IMHO of course. And just to be clear, I have taken 2 days of my annual leave entitlement to give me time to do this, so I am not wasting work's time.

What proportion of public sector jobs are 'pointless' ? The Police, the Armed Forces, Doctors, Nurses, Teachers.... Admittedly there are also HMRC, MPs, and the Royal Family ( via the Civil List ).

balls

Oldham supporting colleague has just asked if I can confirm the rumour that we are signing Dale Stephens. Any ideas ?

Wooooooot !!!

guerilla

So why not sort out Mugabe in the same way ? Oh, hang on, where's Zimbabwe's oil ?

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