I’ll give this you are persistent.

Why have the the FS strikes failed as a matter of interest?

Watching Guy Martin, so crack on in my absence

What strikes bru?? Sorry couldn’t resist 😉

Seen some leadership changes. I think R1 has shot itself in the foot for a long time to come tho in terms of any support for anything tbh im afraid

They’re all bloody communists!!!!

Hopefully @aa they’ll realise they need to pay 1 or 2p more in VAT or income tax or similar to meet the increasing costs. Interesting the Tories are destroying the NHS by spending £130bn pa but the Labour party is going to save it by spending £131.5bn

They’ve just voted themselves an 11% rise IIRC.

Ah but the Tories will spend all that £130bn on coke/hookers for their “rich businessmen mates” whereas the Labour party will spend the £131.5bn on cuddly nurses.

Don’t you know nuffink ?

You don’t recall entirely correctly, it is a recommendation of a draft report of the independent body which will not become final until after the general election – i am not sure they even vote for it anymore – and they (the government) – if the same procedure is followed as in this partliament – will receive no net increase as any increase will recouped by a like reduction in their ministerial pay.

Binners – they are not all super wealthy

Ah yes, you’re right. The poor lambs will (at worst) have to make do with £67k plus generous expenses plus a cushy pension.

^^ plus a wonderful housing allowance that allows them to keep the property paid for by the tax payer…..plus subsidised eating and drinking in the Commons and the longest holidays of any occupational group. The pension and severance payment are truly splendid even after only one term in office.

The parasitic MPs can claim for that many things that their salary is basically a nest egg. The NHS pay is an absolute joke and they deserve better.

I’m not a supporter of politicians by any stretch, but my understanding was that the 11% pay rise was recommended by the new independent body set up to take the decision away from MPs, and with the parallel reductions in allowances etc. result in no greater cost.

Following two public consultations, IPSA has published its final report on MPs’ pay and pensions.

We have decided on a modern, professional package for MPs, with the following elements:

• a salary of £74,000 in 2015, indexed to changes in average earnings in the whole economy thereafter;
• a new pension on a par with those in other parts of the public service, saving the taxpayer millions;
• scrapping out-of-touch “resettlement payments” worth tens of thousands of pound per MP and introducing more modest, modern redundancy packages, available only to those who contest their seat and lose; and
• a tighter regime of business costs and expenses – ending the provision for things such as evening meals.

Taken together, these changes will not increase costs to the taxpayer when they are introduced following the 2015 general election.

Additionally, IPSA will give MPs the opportunity produce an annual report to sit alongside our reporting of business cost and expense claims.

Now I haven’t read the details, and I don’t for one minute take the claims at face value, but it is clearly not the traditional ‘lets give ourselves a double figure % pay rise just cause we can’.

NHS definitely deserve pay rises though. Frontline staff anyway, I don’t know much about managers earnings against their effort. I know my wife works about an extra 15-20% hours for no pay because she insists on doing her job (practice nurse) properly but the NHS management refuse to increase her hours to achieve this. So it’s either do it for nothing or neglect her job.

And a pay rise for NHS staff was recommended by an independent review body…

If thats directed at me I’m amazed you think I give a shit what Labour might or might not do. I have no love for them either. My post was non party political and expressing my support for the strike. Funny how the right wingers always try to make it about party politics… “yeah the tories might be **** but labour are **** shite too”. Who gives a toss.

Very short sighted view of the world project. What about public opinion and how it might influence voters?

Maybe I’m mistaken sorry if I’m wrong.

Thing that gets me is whilst there’s frontline staff going short, the shower in charge are letting private companies come in to feast from the NHS budget. They call it efficiency savings, but none of these private companies are in it for charity. They are skimming off millions of pounds of our money through profit. Now surely it’s possible for the NHS to deliver at the same costs as these private companies, thereby freeing up the proportion of the contracts tendered that is profit for use elsewhere in the system. The same goes for damn near everything in the Public Sector that has been privatised or contracted out. But whilst we are all quiet and accepting, nothing will change.

To be fair, it wasn’t a proper strike. Most staff still attended to patients, most carried on working, any picket lines were made up of off duty staff. A proper strike would see all union staff walk out in totality and not work, full stop, for the duration. Patients would suffer & die. I think that’s the only horrors that would maybe budge the politicians. However, the workers have hearts and conceinces, and that will never happen, so, the politicians have them bent over a barrel and shaft em. Conspiracy theorists will say their ensuring the NHS breaks, paving the way for frontline privatization.