[Closed] Have we done the tube drivers pay deal?

Tube drivers are in the top 10% on income.

How about if you make the top 10%? The ASHE figures reveal that a salary of £44,881 is enough to just edge into that top bracket.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8151355.stm

"Ransos that is correct, registrars paid less, fact. Guess all them medics have wasted time with their fancy book learning all those years."

Erm, where did I disagree?

Sorry turning round from nights so read that 'I think that's wrong' as disagreeing, oops. Must read more carefully but find the smudge I leave on the screen when I follow the words with my finger messy. 🙂

You need to start from a point of truth - the idea that we are broke is a lie put around by ideologically driven right wingers that far too many of you have swallowed

We are quite a bit in debt though

http://www.debtbombshell.com/britains-budget-deficit.htm

Ransos, I totally agree with you GPs are over paid.
Also dangerously bad at their jobs. (in my experience at least)
and the labour party is just another bunch of Westminster cronies looking out for their own, with a leader who has never worked in his life and has no idea what life is like in the real world, and you can replace Labour with conservative, Lib Dem, etc etc.

That's ok!

What I think's wrong is that GPs earn twice as much (or more) as registrars. I think it could be more evenly distributed, no?

the idea that we are broke is a lie put around by ideologically driven right wingers that far too many of you have swallowed

TJ - in the past year, we have borrowed over 130 [b]billion[/b] more than we took in taxes

I'd call that pretty flat on your arse 🙄

Absolutely, but as I said in my earlier ranty post they managed to get a very nice contract signed off by government a couple of years ago so we need to find another way to rebalance this until time to renegotiate their contracts and then it can be redressed by either changing payscale or upping their work commitments to earn it.

"We are quite a bit in debt though"

Your link refers to the deficit, not debt. And it tells us that the deficit under labour was usually lower than it was under the preceeding conservative government.

Deficit means our debt is increasing which is quite a bad thing really - especially as it's increasing so dramatically. A pound saved is a pound earned....

Ransos:

If you really can't see that the weak state of unions in the private sector is a significant reason that employers are driving down on terms and conditions, there's no hope for you.

This may be true (to an extent) but is a very narrow perspective. Perhaps the starting point would be to ask why unions have been marginalised by their ex-members and the law in the private sector? Perhaps private sector workers realise that they are an anachronism?

Maybe terms and conditions would improve if we educated our young people correctly, gave them correct skills in order to make them of more value to employers? And that is a X-political party comment BTW.

And if GPs/ consultants earned a little less, we could pay registrar doctors more appropriately.

1. Who determines what is appropriate?
2. Consultants are allowed to operate (no pun intended) in a market that allows correct pricing of their skills and values. Others are not - whose fault is that?

As an examination of the shadow cabinet shows. The days of working class people becoming Labour MPs are long gone.

Prescott has a lot to answer for!

And it tells us that the deficit under labour was usually lower than it was under the preceeding conservative government.

As a %age of GDP though, not in absolute figures! also worth noting that national debt still fell under Thatcher, reduced from 43% of GDP to 25% - and we're now back up to 76%.

GDP can go down as well as up!

Ransos ...the point is during the boom years we spent at an unsustainable rate. I.e. we spent more than we earned. This only made the fall bigger and harder when it eventually came. GB's famous no more boom and bust for a smokescreen of I'll pretend there isn't a problem, by the time Joe Public works this out I'll be long gone!

TJ - The debt is real and dangerous. Whatever your ideology or politics the public sector has to be scaled back to s sustainable level. I'm not a right winger, banker or other such idealist. I can just see the writing on the wall.

This is all very silly is it not?

Can we all take a reality check, now is not the time to be idelogical. The nation is broke and we need to fix that first.

The reason I belive unions are outdated is the fact that they don't represent the working man, they represent their members.

Far better for the unions to be marginalised and the working people to be represented by ...umm I don't know ....the Labour party? (or substitute party of your choice). That is what democracy is about.

(btw when I referred to the unions and industricl revolution I was referring to the movement which started in the industrial revolution and not a specific union).

"Deficit means our debt is increasing which is quite a bad thing really - especially as it's increasing so dramatically. A pound saved is a pound earned.... "

You could, for example, increase public spending, in order to get people back into work, who will then pay tax, spend more, etc. The are pros and cons to this approach, but it's not necessarily true that a pound saved is a pound earned when running the economy.

"Ransos ...the point is during the boom years we spent at an unsustainable rate. I.e. we spent more than we earned. This only made the fall bigger and harder when it eventually came. GB's famous no more boom and bust for a smokescreen of I'll pretend there isn't a problem, by the time Joe Public works this out I'll be long gone!"

I suggest you look at this graph: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/oct/18/deficit-debt-government-borrowing-data#zoomed-picture

You'll note that under the conservatives, 16 out of 18 years were in deficit. Pretending that a deficit is all to do with Brown is pure fantasy.

Frodo - Member

TJ - The debt is real and dangerous. Whatever your ideology or politics the public sector has to be scaled back to s sustainable level. I'm not a right winger, banker or other such idealist. I can just see the writing on the wall.

The debt is real of course. However it is not high in comparative terms, it is not dangerous, it can be easily dealt with.

The idea that the public sector needs to be scaled back is completely ideologically driven. We have been and remain a low tax economy with a small public sector compared to many other countries when like with like is compared.

JY - Come on when have I espoused my love for the free market. I see it as a useful tool to ensure that the contry has the right skills and people to fill the jobs it needs. Thats it a useful tool only. I do believe that an unfetted free market is unfeasible (and I believe Miss Flanders or Mr Peston at the BBC made a good point recently about free markets being distorted by human emotion and faliability).

There need to be controls. What the unions achieved was setting process in place for establishing legal minimums in terms of H&S and welfare.

The simple truth is it is not and B&W as the left or right make it out to be.

TJ - our debt levels are unsustainably high, but we are lucky that unlike others our borrowings have longer maturities, so we have the time to pay them back that other countries do not.

Please, lets not have the "low tax" economy BS again!!??!!

Look the real issue here is those dreadful working class people are earning £50k a year. I bet they have never even heard of hummus. Down with this sort of thing!

only one out of every thousand applicants actual make the grade and qualify

No, just because the 999 did not get the job does not mean that they were not qualified - simply that someone else was luckier or more qualified than them!

This is an unskilled manual labour job that pays a huge salary. As a result, there are 1000 qualified applicants for each vacancy - a very telling figure in itself.

One lucky lottery winner takes the jackpot, and the other 999 pay an obscene sum of money to travel to the less well paying job they eventually get, with the obscene ticket prices subsidising the lottery winner's wages.

So yer average tube train driver probably earns a good bit more than yer average STW right winger. Is that why they're all frothing about it?

I think this is the key.

Lawyers, accountants, estate agents, bankers and the vast majority of professionals in London who all earn six figure salaries don't worry about paying £7 a day to get to work. Union protection rackets just hit the poor.

We can tell you care about the poor, we really can.

Look the real issue here is those dreadful working class people are earning £50k a year. I bet they have never even heard of hummus. Down with this sort of thing!

Just imagine, some of them can probably now afford expensive mountain bikes that they ride at trail centres, Urghhh!!!

It appears that this thread has been hi-jacked by the STW left wing mafia, (eveyone else is probably working or driving trains!)

Indeed I have work to do so I shall retire. Enjoy your squabbling and general exchange of dogma!

teamhurtmore - Member

TJ - our debt levels are unsustainably high,.............

Really? How do you know this. Lower than many other countries who are not destroying their public services in a futile attempt to decrese it.

Please, lets not have the "low tax" economy BS again!!??!!

Unfortunately it is true. You may not like to hear it as it does not sit with the ideological bullshine you have swallowed but it is a simply truth. We pay less tax than most of Europe and we get almost all of our healthcare from that tax unlike say Germany - where the tax is higher and then you have to pay health insurance on top.

It appears that this thread has been hi-jacked by the STW left wing mafia, (eveyone else is probably working or driving trains!)

My incoherent rehashing of views I half-remember from the Daily Telegraph has been pulled apart, and I can't cope with it, so I'm going.

FTFY

well I'd like the country to clear its debpts, in the same way I want to clear my overdraft and loan.

I think its prudent to clear the debt.

Germany - where the tax is higher and then you have to pay health insurance on top.

You suggest we pay health insurance on top too? We probably should align ourselves more with Europe in matters such as these.

No -= I suggest we should look at the reality not the cant 🙂

"well I'd like the country to clear its debpts, in the same way I want to clear my overdraft and loan.

I think its prudent to clear the debt."

A mistake a lot of people make is to think that you should run a national economy like you would run your household accounts. They are completely different things.

The point about national debt is its affordability. In historical terms, our levels of debt are low:
http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/downchart_ukgs.php?chart=G0-total&year=1900_2011&units=p&state=UK

I had a letter earlier in the year from HMRC informing me that i would soon be liable for the 50% tax rate (the one that starts at £150,000) if i continued to earn as i had been at the start of the year....

....i'm a Paramedic.

Like i said, the money is out there if you are prepared to move around for it....recently i have been enjoying the oil/gas boom in Western Australia and being paid $1,000 (£660) per day for my services....i have also been whoring myself out for sports events cover at £50 per hour....then there is the Forensic/Police Custody work....then there are the private minor injury/illness centres cropping up all over London at the moment which pay ridiculous rates to recruit people like me to pander to the idiots in London who dont want to wait in an NHS A&E....

....obviously the very idea of 50% tax is abhorrent to me, i think its immoral for a government to think they are entitled to half of anybody's money....so i have scaled back and now work about 3 days a week doing a mixture of NHS emergency work and private work for the police.

We are an increasingly unhealthy nation with a fat population who are suffering ever more with heart complaints, diabetes, breathing problem etc....love it, i just see a big fat £ sign waddling towards me when these people rock up in A&E.

(typing this from the house i live in for free as it came with the premises my girlfriend rents for business....my house is rented out thus providing another income source....not back at work until Saturday, cant decide whether to have a beer and a **** or go out on the bike for a while?)

Decisions, decisions.

JY - Come on when have I espoused my love for the free market.

Pretty much every post you mention it in a positive light and arugue about the unions restricting it. I accpet you have moved your argument [again]and you are no longer saying this. For you the free emarket is great tool but it needs to be controlled or in other words we need to make sure the free market is not FREE.

It appears that this thread has been hi-jacked by the STW left wing mafia, (eveyone else is probably working or driving trains!)

Indeed I have work to do so I shall retire. Enjoy your squabbling and general exchange of dogma!

TJ

The idea that the public sector [s]needs[/s] does not need to be scaled back is completely ideologically driven.

FTFY

Ransos

The point about national debt is its affordability

No, the point about national debt, is that its better not to owe anybody money, than it is to owe them money.

"well I'd like the country to clear its debpts, in the same way I want to clear my overdraft and loan.

I think its prudent to clear the debt."

A mistake a lot of people make is to think that you should run a national economy like you would run your household accounts. They are completely different things.

The point about national debt is its affordability. In historical terms, our levels of debt are low:
http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/downchart_ukgs.php?chart=G0-total&year=1900_2011&units=p&state=UK

I like that chart. Levels of debt are indeed low by historical standards. But the chart also appears to show that Margaret Thatcher left the economy in a better state when she left in 1990 than it has been since.

It should be noted that a lot of the debt from 1915 until the 60s in that chart will have been due to two world wars decimating the British economy.

If the tube drivers are in the top 10% of earners in the UK doesn't that mean that they are actually part of "the rich"?
Am I misunderstanding what "the rich" are?

deviant, i'd be more than happy to hear more about yr oil/gas experiences and /or those london drop in places. i'm thinking about a move southwards for this very sort of work (which i'm stupidly well qualified for) but equally i'd be happy to loll about in an oil refinery for that sort of return

I like that chart. Levels of debt are indeed low by historical standards. But the chart also appears to show that Margaret Thatcher left the economy in a better state when she left in 1990 than it has been since.

Selling off most of our national assets surely reduced the Public Net Debt pretty well?

No, the point about national debt, is that its better not to owe anybody money, than it is to owe them money.

It's potentially worthwhile to have some if the cost of the debt is more than covered by the benefit of that debt. E.g. my mortgage rate is 0.98% so I may as well invest in a 3% savings a/c and not pay off my debt.

TJ - you are a laugh when it comes to tax. And I love the comparisons with Eu - the junkyard (sorry Junkyard!) of global economics and finance.

Deviant - your personal example is interesting albeit only a one-off. But (1) it shows [b]one[/b] impact on people faced with an increased tax rate:

so i have scaled back and now work about 3 days a week

The substitution effect happily ignored by the high tax rate apologists

And (2) is just shows that earning £150k is nothing to do with working hard (joke!!).

We should be out in the hills (but remind me not to shake your hand given your choices described above!!)

[i]If the tube drivers are in the top 10% of earners in the UK doesn't that mean that they are actually part of "the rich"?
Am I misunderstanding what "the rich" are?[/i]

Indeed, this could put the lefties in a quandry....now that the tube drivers are rich (but working class according to the lefties who love a bit of class pigeon holing)....should they now be hounded for higher taxes to bail out the 'poor'?

I've never quite understood the obsession with class....at what point (in monetary terms) does somebody stop being working class?....or is it to do with accents?.....is somebody working class if they are from a wealthy background, educated privately but end up working for minimum wage in an unskilled job?....can people cross the class barrier?

....see how silly it all is?

The loony left love it though!....i put this kind of nonsense on a par with the outdated 'caste' system in India.

....obviously the very idea of 50% tax is abhorrent to me, i think its immoral for a government to think they are entitled to half of anybody's money....

I love the way people try and pretend the 50% tax rate applies to all their income.

We are an increasingly unhealthy nation with a fat population who are suffering ever more with heart complaints, diabetes, breathing problem etc....[b]love it, i just see a big fat £ sign waddling towards me when these people rock up in A&E.[/b]

(typing this from the house i live in for free as it came with the premises my girlfriend rents for business....my house is rented out thus providing another income source....not back at work until Saturday, cant decide whether to have a beer and a **** or go out on the bike for a while?)

Decisions, decisions.

Is there any point to this other than to boast about what an arsehole you are? You are one of those 'front-line' staff who we keep hearing are so dedicated and caring eh?

No, the point about national debt, is that its better not to owe anybody money, than it is to owe them money.

All governments borrow money. It's what they do with that money, and the affordability of the borrowing that matters.

If you really think that it's better not to owe anybody money then presumably you think that no-one should have a mortgage.

But the chart also appears to show that Margaret Thatcher left the economy in a better state when she left in 1990 than it has been since.

That depends if you define the state of the economy by the size of the national debt. What about inflation? Unemployment? Inequality? In any case, even by your sole criterion, the data for the 1980s do not reflect well on her.

Grum....i'm well aware that the higher tax rates only apply to earnings above a certain threshold...doesnt change the fact that somebody in Whitehall or Westminster seriously thinks it is right and proper to help themselves to half of somebody'e earnings (above a certain point obviously)....i find this idea nauseating.

The point of my post was to draw out the lefties who are actually nothing more than green eyed monsters....socialism does tend to be the politics of envy afterall....i'm not a greedy banker responsible for this current financial mess (if you believe some people) and i'm not a spendthrift public servant in Whitehall/Westminster (who are also complicit in this mess)....just an ordinary bloke making good money where i can....but as i said just now, the left only see the headline figure and cant help themselves!

I'm not unique, about 10 years ago i had a chat with a mate who was about 15 years older than me...he had a carpet fitting business which he ran until 3pm and then opened his gym from 3pm until 9pm...he worked hard, the carpet fitting was 5 days a week and the gym was open 6 days a week....he told me then that earning less than 100k a year was 'poor'....that struck a chord and i've always tried to look after myself and earn as much as i can....there are however a huge number of people who think they are entitled to a good salary in exchange for a 35 hour working week....its just not going to happen.

If people stopped worrying about political ideals and trying to change the world and instead just focused on making things good for themselves then i reckon the world would be a much better place and all this class nonsense and wealth redistribution crap wouldnt be necessary.

(I think you'll find its politicians who love to describe health care workers as 'dedicated and caring'....when it suits them....if you speak to the people actually in these roles they'll tell you its just a job and if something better came along then they'd leave.)