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And a basic grip on reality might help you understand why it's not possible to have individual bin collections. No one would want to provide the service.
Again with the misquoting to produce reductio ad absurdium::
why cant I [u]and my neighbours[/u] choose to get [u]our[/u] bins collected by someone who offers a better level of service?
see that, read it again - no reason why a street/neighbourhood/estate cannot select their service provider, let alone a village or parish council - why on earth should it be issued on a county wide contract?
Junky - Member
I realise it would cost more ,whilst being more efficient, apparently.
The point is z-11 goes on abnout how we make nothing and live off him but we could do the same thing witht the NHS via insurance to a private firm rather than tax and suddenly we would have a private company making things ....which seems a bit of a silly argument IMHO.
Where the **** did I say that? I didn't did I Junky?
I said that the public sector should be as efficient as possible, you're making leaps and bounds in your own imagination beyond that!
tiger - worse overall. The operations cost more per operation privately and the outcomes are worse. This is because the increaed convenience means decreased efficiency and there are also less experienced junior staff around for when things go wrong - so when it goes wrong the consequences are worse.
( gross oversimplification and generalization)An NHS hospital has its operating theatres full all the time. It can do this by making people wait until there is a space - and then not giving them the choice of taking that space. A private hospital want to offer choice and no waiting times - so it needs to have spare operating capacity at all times. This means the private hospital does less operations per hour of operating theatre time as some of the time there is no one being operated on. The private hospital also has to make a profit.
Worse outcome come about becayuse safety costs money - infection control precautions and so on and aslo because there are less experienced staff around. At night there may be no on call DR on site for example. So when things go wrong they go badly wrong
Crikey, what a thread - nothing like internet forums for some extreme views eh?! 🙂 'It's all f**' (name your villain here) fault!'
I'll preface what I say by mentioning that I'm self employed & run my own business, and I started work in the 1970's, so can remember the effects of various Govt's handling of the economy.
IMO, although it's obvious hard cuts in spending were needed, this budget goes to far, too soon. Perhaps the worst thing is the VAT increase. If the VAT rise has the same effect as previous ones, inflation will go up, followed by interest rates - this will kill growth.
Cuts wise, the most stupid decision has to be the decision to cut the Govt loan to Sheffield Forgemasters, and the cancellation of £20M for a manufacturing business park. It's pretty obvious this has been done to p off Cleggs local constituents - and this is from a Govt who claim to be on the side of business! (Grrrrr)
To give people who don't know an idea - Forgemasters were after the loan to help them build a new machine that would make them one of only two place in the World that can produce pressure vessels for Nuclear Power Stations. The demand for these pressure vessels is extremely high and although China & India want to build similar forges, Sheff Forgemasters have a hugh advantage, as they are years ahead of China & India in knowledge of specialist steels required. The loan that the previous Govt had arranged was borrowed by the Govt at 1.5% interest and Forgemasters were going to repay it at 3.5% interest - so the Govt wouldn't exactly be loosing out! Oh, and out of interest, the local Regional Development Agency had managed to get £40m funding from private industry to put towards the project. (as per usual, the people who slag off things like the RDA's haven't the first idea what they do for local businesses like mine!).
So, IMO, it's the crap budget that I expected - anyone with a mortgage or business, I suggest you start stashing some money away now.
I said that the public sector should be as efficient as possible
One way of achieving that is to make local authorities bigger so that, for example, refuse collection contracts are only negotiated once, rather than having each street, neighbourhood or parish negotiate it separately.
Z-11 are you suggesting I misquoted you?
The reason you and your neighbours can't get together and choose to get your bins collected is 'cos it clearly wouldn't bleedin' work.
And if you think it would then IMHO you are insane.
The reason you and your neighbours can't get together and choose to get your bins collected is 'cos it clearly wouldn't bleedin' work.
They could get together and choose who collected their bins, and when. They wouldn't get a rebate on their Council Tax for choosing to do so though.
But if fortnightly collections bothers someone, there's nothing at all to stop them arranging for someone to come and collect their rubbish on the other week. If someone is willing to pay the extra for a service that goes beyond whatever their local authority is able to provide, there is nothing to stop them doing so.
fattatlasses
Nicely put
Zulu - the NHS is the most efficient healthcare provider around. Far more so that UK private ones, far more so that other systems such as the hybrid german or dutch ones.
So should that be the model for all services? Large stat4e monopoly with tight budgetary control and economies of scale?
Good, saves me the bother of pointing out that central banks in most countries, including Britain, are not regulatory authorities but bankers to the state, so have little to do with how private sector banks conduct their affairs.
[url= http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/financialstability/index.htm ]The Bank has a statutory objective to “contribute to protecting and enhancing the stability of the financial systems of the United Kingdom”. The Bank does this through its risk assessment and risk reduction work, market intelligence functions, payments systems oversight, banking and market operations, including, in exceptional circumstances by acting as lender of last resort, and resolution work to deal with distressed banks.[/url]
although admittedly this was a bit muddied in the days of the FSA.
mmm ... interesting thread given the reality of my day today ...
Public sector worker (so obviously as wasteful, lazy ****er!) - but not always a 'profit' in this area of work so has to be done by the useless public sector (who else would want to put in paths for disabled people, or protect biodiversity). highlights of today's news - pay freeze for at least 2 yrs but expected to extend to 5 yrs - this was no surprise and is accepted as our contribution, also accepted that to make ourselves more useful we'll end up working more unpaid hours to get everything done, but the absolute corker was the likelihood of 40% cut in budget therefore leading to a 40% cut in staff ... The private sector is not going to be able to pick up this much slack - there is going to be a hugenumber of experienced people unemployed. This is the reality, not the slight reduction in individual's personal income from VAT etc, but the massive rise there is about to be in unemployment. 20% of the population is employed in the public sector and 25% of them will be made redundant. Plus the 25% reduction will slash public services - all of this is not going to be picked up by the private sector.
The budget has just been the start, it is going to get much worse
Zulu Eleven seems to manage to spend an awful lot of time dicking around on the internet for someone in the cutthroat, hyper-efficient private sector.
Yes, of course I have- and I have taken my custom somewhere else - no customers, no money, company either improves or goes to the wall.Thats how the private sector works!
From a few pages back, but I agree with Z11 on this...what's that coming over the hill? Is it public money to bail out the failed private sector banks?
From what I've seen working for a large number of private sector clients is useless management employing useless managers who they won't sack because it was their decision to employ them in the first place, the amount of financial wastage is beyond belief. Anyone who thinks that after all these years of failed privatisations of former nationalised industries that privatisation is still the answer are completely mental and you should be locked up in an institution.
If they hadn't closed those down already, and introduced careless community...which might explain why there are a few mentalists lose on this forum.
[i]Tesco uses offshore havens to avoid up to £1 billion taxPremium SUPERMARKET giant Tesco has created an elaborate corporate structure involving offshore tax havens which enables it to avoid paying what could be up to £1 billion of tax on profits from the sale of its UK properties, it was claimed today.
The complex structures are said to include a string of Cayman Island companies, each named after a different colour from aqua to violet.
Tesco has begun a programme of selling and leasing back UK stores, providing the company with a gain of up to £6bn, which would normally be liable to tax.
But the first two deals – worth £445 million and £650m – are said to have used the companies set up in the Cayman Islands, where the rate of corporation tax is zero, allowing Tesco to avoid tax on £500m profit.
The supermarket chain is not alone in such arrangements. [b][u]Nearly a third of the UK's 700 largest businesses paid no corporation tax in 2005-06, and another third paid less than £10m each.[/u][/b]
Lucy Neville, Tesco's executive director of corporate and legal affairs, defended the offshore structures, saying it was the company's duty to shareholders and customers to operate tax-efficiently.
She added: "Tesco is one of the UK's largest taxpayers."[/i]
Just for a bit of balance, like.... Efficient, lean and not paying the money they should...
25 billion pounds a year is lost by tax avoidance, one would hope this figure will be investigated and brought down by our fiscally minded new government....
sue w - please do the following for me
- find manager
- ask following questions
1 - have we given notice to all non-permanent employess and then offered them their job back at -15% rate, if not why not, that is an option the private sector are using and I know a bloke on a forum that it happened to
2 - could we have the option of either a 10% pay cut or a 10% headcount cut, as that bloke I know on the forum had that happen to two mates and by the way they only got 3 hours to make their minds up
3 - you know that bloke on the forum, well in his specialist field the product he uses, it's split into vertical markets - sales, automotive, order management, telecoms, public sector etc etc, he wants to know why the most highly available day rates are for the public sector vertical
You just have to admire the ruthless beauty of the tesco business model - pass all costs on to other people at all times. Ooh we fancy a promotion lets just tell our suppliers we'll pay them less. Slightly off topic.
In a sensible world it would be the ego money that would go - departments or quango's duplicating and triplicating the work of others just because they want one of what ever it is as well. In the real world the ego money will be the last to go as it seems to be who shouts loundest lasts longest. I'm on the there is waste in the public sector and it could be run more efficiently side. Doesnt mean I think the private sector can do things better - its the people not the sector who make a difference. This comes from far many years interview different parts of the public and private sector. Hurrah we've made a profit - very good but was it as profitable as it could have been? Unless its tesco i doubt it.
Where the **** did I say that? I didn't did I Junky?
I never had you down as a person of great self restrain but you managed to reply a few times before the insults started ...did the mediaction wear off? That cr@ppy public sector nurse give you some grey imported drugs from Tesco and you reverted back to type?
Last week the gov't trumpeted the fact that they had identified 12 projects worth £2bn that they were cancelling, the notion being that they were 'wasteful'. Leaving aside the argument about whether they were wasteful or not ([b]one was a new hospital in Hartlepool[/b])
From what i've read - this news was welcomed in Hartlepool - as it was going to close the 2 local hospitals for a new one which was opposed by a significant number of local people on grounds that it was geographically in the wrong place for both communities, had no public transport links and would seriously affect A19 and A689 traffic.
The plan entails the destruction of 300 acres of agricultural land and was contrary to the published structure plan for Hartlepool.
It received over 350 local objections at the planning review.
the closure of University Hospital of Hartlepool has long been in dispute - Blair saying in 2004 there was no plans to close the hospital - only for the decision to be reversed in 2007
I've worked hard for 30 years for a large public sector department (& despite the abuse on here about public sector I can honestly say we have many thousands working hard to deliver a good service appreciated by millions), only to be now told take a pay freeze (cut!), and oh! That pension you have have contributed towards for years - well you ain't going to get as much as you thought you would! B*llocks! Nice to have an appreciative employer!
Yes I know the private sector was badly hit, I was out there delivering an unprecidented service to those being made redundant. This is the thanks you get!
Still Cameron & his mates have got their millions tucked away safely!
Our society is about to be managed in a very right wing way! Look out if you are unfortunate enough to be poor,ill or unemployed! In 6 months time you'll find out what the effects are of public sector cuts - oh! and [b]DON'T[/b] complain if you voted Tory... or worse still you didn't vote, because your about to get what you voted for!
Evidence of the very many unneeded public sector employees please E.V.I.D.E.N.C.E
I work for a Govt Agency, so civil service T&Cs - the organisation I work for has about 1000 employees, of those at least 100 are middle managers who only manage one or two other persons.
Their job is solely to attend meetings with their managers and then to pass the decisions on to the people/person they manage (oh and attend 'team building' exercises at plush country hotels on full expenses plus lucrative living away allowance)
Their pay band is in the 35-45k range, their 'work' could be replaced by a simple 'team briefing' type procedure.
Losing them from the payroll would be harsh on them personally, however they are unnecessary on an operational level and one should question how these posts have been created and maintained.
I imagine the larger Govt agencies and Departments are similarly over staffed and could readily sustain a cull of such posts.......
Time for a quick [url=
Don't say you weren't warned!
[i]Time for a quick reprise?[/i]
RPRT, I think - regardless of political standing - all can agree on the brilliance of that video.
To answer the original question (IMO):
No. I believe (as do some others on here) that we are returning to the lost era that was the 1980's in the UK, which I believe is being done largely due to the dogma of those who now have their noses happily in the trough with no intentions of taking them out.
(That's possibly my longest sentence on STW!).
having seen the breakdown of how the torries plan to cut the deficit by 2013 im starting to think the budget is a big gamble
the condem plan is to cut 11bn from welfare, 80bn from government spending, and 8bn by raising taxes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/10390823.stm
balancing the books is dependent on a doubling of private investment, i think that means pfis, privatisation etc
and our export market rising from 2% to 25%
this is modeled on the experience taht canada had a few years ago and it worked for them
the obvious problem is how you magic up a 25% increase in exports, when a) countries like china make plenty of stiuff on their own
b) we dont have many factories left! (and we will need these factories to employ all the public sector workers about to hit the dole)
it worked in canada but its a huge country with masses of natural resources
a better example would be japan
when they tried to cut their deficit quickly in a similar fashion in the 90s it led to a 15 year recession and a house price crash of 87% average accross the country
lets hope gideons expensive education has given him the insight he needs to take us down the right path
And IIRC japans debt is about 2 or 3 times ours as a % of GDP
house price crash of 87% average accross the country
and that would be a bad thing?
from wikipedia
Economist Richard C. Koo wrote that Japan's "Great Recession" that began in 1990 was a "balance sheet recession." It was triggered by a collapse in land and stock prices, which caused Japanese firms to become insolvent, meaning their assets were worth less than their liabilities. Despite zero interest rates and expansion of the money supply to encourage borrowing, Japanese corporations in aggregate opted to pay down their debts from their own business earnings rather than borrow to invest as firms typically do. Corporate investment, a key demand component of GDP, fell enormously (22% of GDP) between 1990 and its peak decline in 2003. Japanese firms overall became net savers after 1998, as opposed to borrowers. Koo argues that it was massive fiscal stimulus (borrowing and spending by the government) that offset this decline and enabled Japan to maintain its level of GDP. In his view, this avoided a U.S. type Great Depression, in which U.S. GDP fell by 46%. He argued that monetary policy was ineffective because there was limited demand for funds while firms paid down their liabilities. In a balance sheet recession, GDP declines by the amount of debt repayment and un-borrowed individual savings, leaving government stimulus spending as the primary remedy
A comment that was made yesterday on 5Live, was Labour had 13yrs to sort out the countrys overdraft but decided not to.
[i]A comment that was made yesterday on 5Live, was Labour had 13yrs to sort out the countrys overdraft but decided not to. [/i]
instead they decided to rebuild the shattered nhs and education systems bring in a minimum wage, foi act and ban fox hunting 😉
A comparison with Japan is not entirely appropriate as their economy is very different to ours, they are a nation of savers and succeeding governments (and many foreign governments) have been keen for them to encourage more consumption to generate growth but they have been singularly unsuccessful. As a result, foreign ownership of Japanese government bonds is very low and their debt markets are arguably less exposed to the risk of capital flight, hence their ability to finance such high levels (200% of gdp) of debt.
Likewise a comparison with Canada is not entirely appropriate because, as noted already they achieved export led growth in an environment where their primary export markets were growing substantially.
So when you say the government are taking a risk you are right, the real question whether it is the least risky option when faced with the realistic (though not certain) prospect of a debt crisis. You will find economists who support both sides of the argument, there is no longer any consensus and you can be pretty sure that the media will pick those with the most fervent views to either support their position or provide the most entertaining arguments.
So when you say the government are taking a risk you are right, the real question whether it is the least risky option when faced with the realistic (though not certain) prospect of a debt crisis. You will find economists who support both sides of the argument, there is no longer any consensus and you can be pretty sure that the media will pick those with the most fervent views to either support their position or provide the most entertaining arguments.
Bloody hell - I have to agree with mefty altho I personally am convinced its a not the least risky its suicidally risky.
Please can someone just answer how we are going to increase our exports to 25%?
SS20 - I have not looked at the details so my basic answer is no but I would imagine encouraging foreign investment through competitive corporation tax rates would be one plank of the strategy.
In addition, and the real reason for posting, is to correct the misconception that only manufacturers export, it is possible to export services as well and we already do a fair bit of this. I should also point out while 25% looks a huge number it is actually the net of two very big numbers, exports less imports so it can be achieved by a combination of an increase in exports and a decrease in imports, not just an increase in the former.
we are going to sell "benefit scroungers" to left wing c****ries with full employment.
Or private finance will fill the vacum left by the reducing public sector make something , export it and rescue us from this situation if you believe the view of Osborne..it seems highly unlikely to me. Even the most right wing person who complained about the optimistic growth figures of the previous govt must accept that this a highly contentious view. Remember you, me and the multi millionaire estate inheriting Gideon are all in this together and he is also taking some of the tough pain apparently
RPRT - that is genius.
so mefty our way out of this pickle is too encourage foreign companies selling services to come to our rescue by giving them tax breaks whilst cutting benefits slashing jobs and all paying more tax ... when you put it like that I cant think why anyone would not support it. I for one long for the return of foreign banks selling their services abroad and exporting their profits...cant see what could possibly go wrong
PS Kimbers said our export market you have described the balance of payments [exports-imports]
RPTP dont have access to you tube I feel cheated what is it?
Cheers Mefty I thought that was the case we have doing this exercise all day in the office and no one has been able to answer just like yourself.
Posted again because its apt;
[i]SUPERMARKET giant Tesco has created an elaborate corporate structure involving offshore tax havens which enables it to avoid paying what could be up to £1 billion of tax on profits from the sale of its UK properties, it was claimed today.
The complex structures are said to include a string of Cayman Island companies, each named after a different colour from aqua to violet.
Tesco has begun a programme of selling and leasing back UK stores, providing the company with a gain of up to £6bn, which would normally be liable to tax.
But the first two deals – worth £445 million and £650m – are said to have used the companies set up in the Cayman Islands, where the rate of corporation tax is zero, allowing Tesco to avoid tax on £500m profit.
[b]The supermarket chain is not alone in such arrangements. Nearly a third of the UK's 700 largest businesses paid no corporation tax in 2005-06, and another third paid less than £10m each.[/b]
Lucy Neville, Tesco's executive director of corporate and legal affairs, defended the offshore structures, saying it was the company's duty to shareholders and customers to operate tax-efficiently.
She added: "Tesco is one of the UK's largest taxpayers."
[/i]
Even the companies based here, already doing business here, don't pay what they ought to, so these foreign companies are going to make a huge difference, right?
Junkyard - I thought I better look at the details, you need to read paras C28 onwards of the red book. You will see the figures are based a growth of exports of 3/4% over the pre budget report and a decrease in imports of 0.5%. These are non oil numbers, I could go on but I think it illustrates my analysis is correct. To be fair my analysis was cribbed from Newsnight, but they concentrated on manufacturing and failed to make the point about services so I thought it was worth making.
To be fair my analysis was cribbed from Newsnight
i just went off what Kimbers said still quite optomistic thoiugh I am sure the recession will reduce imports but growth seems unlikely IMHO
Noting that Britain was facing the "longest, deepest, sustained cuts in public spending since the second world war, Robert Chote, the IFS director, said: "Osborne and Clegg have been keen to describe yesterday's measures as progressive in the sense that the rich will feel more pain than the poor. That is a debatable claim. The budget looks less progressive – indeed somewhat regressive – when you take out the effect of measures that were inherited from the previous government, when you look further into the future than 2012-13, and when you include some other measures that the Treasury has chosen not to model."......
The IFS found that the richest 10% would be 7.5% worse off by 2014-15 because of measures coming into force during the current parliament but that almost seven percentage points of that was due to Labour changes.The poorest 10% were left almost untouched by Labour's plans but would see their incomes cut by more than 2.5% over the next five years.
I am amazed to se the multi millionairre Tory punishing the poor and not the rich it is a real surprise that but remember we are all in this together
I decree today that life is simply taking and not giving, England is mine and owes me a living.