sargey – Member

I’m sure I read somewhere that 34 pence in every pound paid to your local council goes towards the pensions of council employees.
I wish I didn’t have to fund the majority of my pension.

1) Government cuts to local authority funding means that your council tax is also a significantly greater %age of their overall balance sheet than 7 years ago. (Particularly if your local council is labour-controlled and your area has a poor conservative vote in general elections too -although the government will dispute this till they are blue in the face the conincidence is quite compelling.)

2) They are reducing spending all over the place by quite extraordinary amounts: you can close libraries, move to fortnightly bin collections, farm out road repairs to crappy subcontractors etc but cutting people’s pension repayments is not so simple to enact. Therefore pension payments represent and increasing percentage of their budget (which is increasingly from you personally not the government) because it is not falling in line with cuts to services and current staffing levels.

3) if its anything like the NHS pension, then the story goes that there is no pension ‘fund’ as a load of money that exists saved up for pensions. -pansion payouts come from this years budget not money saved up 30 years ago. Mine is just like an extra bit of tax that the DOH spend on other stuff in the hope that in 26 years time they will be able to pay me back as if they had actually put it away somewhere to save it for me.

4) How did you calculate that 34% of your council’s tax take makes the ‘majority’ of these peoples’ pensions payments? How many pensions, and of what value are they paying out for with that notional 34% (our local council employed thousand and thousands of people in the 80’s and 90’s, most of whom had pensions and many of whom are now retired.

I bought Mrs W a Hoy jersey the other week: really nice for £50 at 50% off. STiff competition in her wardrobe, but still I think it’s going into her ‘favourites’ drawer next to rapha and above twin six/morvelo, but we’re struggling to see who would have been happy to pay twice the price for it.

Our local election-fraud-spotlight MP was out this morning in a part of his constituency associated with high levels of poverty, social depravation and reliance on benefits, 250m from the military dockyard hs government are stangling and 500m from the beatifully historic Royal Marines base his government is closing down and selling off to private developers. Tough crowd!! Probably pooping himself about losing his 500 vote majority, even TM made a super-secret visit the other day (seems standard for her ‘canvassing’…)

No need for expenses fiddling here though: I live in the neighbouring constituency, where our MP just has a bit of a rest for 6 weeks cos even Paul Nuttall coud get in if he stood for the right party.

some great stuff in there. No Bowie though? David: Live is amazeballs.

Non-anglophones can rock out too though:

Negresses Vertes: Green Bus
Mano Negra -In the Hell of Patchinko

The latter is one of my favourite records by anyone ever actually.

Neighbouring three constituencies have mp’s who have been (Plymouth moor view) or still are implicated in the election expenses stuff, as is our own PCC Alison Hernandez 8O
MP for my own constituency is not corrupt in any financial sense at all. Voting record often suggestive of putting Jesus over constituents (far more ‘outspoken’ Christian than Farron and is on record a few times speaking about having his gammy arm healed in church a few years ago). He doesn’t need to play fast and loose with expenses or have the battlebus visit -in fact compared to shuttling back and forth to London, he is having a nice rest till June, as if he did bother with much campaigning he could do it naked and lay a turd on each doorstep and still get in as long as he had a blue tie on.

So good that ninfan found two opinion pieces by him. (was there really no one else? :( )

Tim Worstall:

one of the global experts on the metal scandium,

Should fit right in here about 10 years ago.

I’ve also ghosted pieces for several UK politicians in many of the UK papers, including the Daily Sport.

….Actually, Ninfan are you Tim Worstall? I always imagined you were youger.

If Flashy actually posted a source for this, it would make it much less of a story. Even from the Torygraph.[/url]

Considering the headstart they had, I am curious about where on earth the Conservative plan is.

Perhaps before Marr had the temerity to rise above his station and challenge TM on her apparent strategy of “what she remembered from failing a basic 1/2 day course in NLP”, it seemed like a good idea and then our strong and stable leader looked like someone losing at parlour games, so they binned it.
‘Strong & stable’ and “this is one tax I promise not to meddle with, but consider my silence on the others to be a firm committment to raise other ones. Especially for poor people and working families” maketh not a manifesto. :?

That’s interesting, considering that Corbyn comes across as more Green than red. I’m a member of the Green Party but I’d be delighted if Labour (under Corbyn) get in, or a combination/coalition thereof.

I discontinued my green party membership for Labour after Corbyn got in: with labour policies/manifesto under milliband, the greens were closest to my own views (I even did that political ‘who to vote for survey to check..) but actually Corbyn’s version of labour has policies even more in line with my views. It would be the same for me if the policies were similar enough even under one of the less popular (with members) leadership contenders…

Remember under FTPT we are not voting in a head of stae but a government: the party chooses its leader and PM and can (and do! Brown, Major, May…) change them between elections whatever the electorate do or don’t say: we are supposed to be voting for local MP’s and policies their parties support: (curiously there are reports by the torygraph that there isn’t even the word ‘conservative’ on some of the ‘vote may’ posters bandies about in constituencies where may is clearly not on the ballot paper) – for all we know if she does win, in a couple of years May might still disappear in puff of poisonous smoke after she has a toys/pram/brexit crisis.

I’m a prison officer, my wife’s a nurse & my stepdaughter is a teacher, from no 3′. I’ve stuck it back through his letterbox.

I have a theory that for some people, however awful things get even in ther own jobs it just reinforces whatever political convicions they have. I was discussing the state of the prison service with a recently retired wing governor (ie not the whole prison, but a pretty eyebrow-raising wing it was), wife worked in schools, son is police staff. You’d think tha having seen all three workplaces have the arse ripped out of them by Grayling, Gove and May this would not be a tory household. Governor says events continue to maintain him feeling (I quote) “slightly to the right of Atilla the Hun”. :?

There are posters on here (and on this very thread) who could have Theresa May* or indeed JC turn up on their doorstep and take a dump on it and they would still support them.

*TBF given her limited appearances surrounded only by party activists and inded paid actors of you believe twitter, the chances of Theresa May turning up on any doorstep that has not been extensively vetted by Coservative HQ, and has had the street cleared of undersirables and guardian/indy/mirror journalists is about zero.

Dirtyrider: good job there are percentages there then. Also bear in mind most people are at the top of certsinly closer to the top of their pay scale than the bottom: When I was one, i was at the top of band 5 for more years than I was at any of the other points in that scale combined. Same is true for 2/3 of my department who have maybe moved jobs sideways but stayed on same salary point (i.e. top of band) since Agenda for change came in 12/13 years ago.

There is a calculator on here if you want. https://www.rcn.org.uk/nursingcounts/calculate-lost-earnings

By that website, my theoretical ‘lost earnings’ over seven years do not take into account my increased pension payments and retirement age, but they are almost exactly the same my local MP’s salary increase for a single year. Smooth.

There is no getting past the facts that 1) NHS staff are required year on year to do more with fewer staff. 2) the biggest cost component by far in healthcare is the wages of the staff- and the ‘frontline’ staff far outnumber the support/non-clinical/management staff.
What is harder to argue is productivity and clinical outcomes- I have a sense that because I am a person of principle and basically find things to do st work rather than avoid them, that I actually help children and families more when I have fewer of them and my actual “throughput” and ‘relapse rate’ are better when I am at a level slightly below “maximum busy” – I think that is very hard to reliably measure though our department audits do support this notion.
So personally I would quite like more colleagues again as much as I would like to have the same standard of living in 5 years as I do today.

most of my work clothes and shoes are from charity shops!
Also a couple of bits of smaller furniture, cycling kit and loads of great books and CD’s if you can stand wading through multiple copies of Clarkson, Robbie Williams etc. All my Iain (without the ‘M) Banks books save ‘the quarry’ are from charity shops for example. Last fave CD was ‘selection sixteen’ by squarepusher.

…. also what do Lizzie Louden and Kate Perrier know that we don’t? 8O

Re: expenses prosecutions. The battle bus was sent very deliberately to very key swing constituencies. Those constituencies won with understandably small majorities. It will not take all that many voters to come out in protest of an unfair playing field for the lucky battle-bussed incumbent to lose their seat whatever the courts decide.
Not sure what the strategy will be for Labour in one of our local swing seats that is the subject of likely prosecution(s), but local tories were making “Nannie it’s not fair” squealing noises in the local press a week before the announcement of the GE.

So. When is a pilot scheme a pilot scheme, and when is it (and I quote Hodge here) a gentleman’s agreement between the cabinet and the council hosting the constituencies of the chancellor and Secretary of State for health?
Rabid leftist frothing from the torygraph here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/07/surrey-council-boss-tells-gentlemans-agreement-ministers-social/

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at that ^^.

Team building exercise ’99! 8)

Also:

‘I know you won’t believe it’s true, but I went with her cos she looks like you.’

As per DD and scotroutes, I am somewhat disappointed at the poor turnout for both. I have never had a storm Doris on voting day but even before/after 12 hour shifts at work I have also never once not voted even for what you might think are ‘less important’ elections e.g. Council, pcc.
I know that’s preaching to the converted- we are all reading this because we do care. But given the howling about NHS, brexit and so on from all corners of paper, telly and social media I can’t understand why more people aren’t coming out. Even to vote ukip ffs!

Thm you couldn’t have spent any longer typing the answer to the questions/suggestions in your post than you did typing what you did, errr, type.
Particularly interested in which union you are referring to in last paragraph, and whether the higher paid employees (of the union in question that is, as opposed to their members) are being rewarded for doing a better job at employer or indeed Labour Party policy level.

Which is another thing, 2 pages and no comments on unions lobbying government?
Particularly interested in the parallels and differences with conventional businesses (U.K. and inter/multi national) lobbying government and funding political parties. My impression is that the messages and the money are many degrees more transparent when it is (to pick a random union supporting virgin healthcare employees) Unite doing the lobbying on health versus virgin care lobbying on [/w]health.

3: 2 x 12ax7 and 1x el84

…of course when you started this thread we were never talking about the leader of HM opposition. I wonder how many of the people in this thread believed on the first page that he would be doing this job for this long? I certainly didn’t!

Anyway this is a thread about the (apparent) leader of HM Opposition so let’s not get side tracked.

Indeed. So back to Pmq then as seems to be the tradition…
So how about the faces pulled on TM’s bench (May, Hunt and Javid specifically; Hammond otoh seems the master of the straight face under pressure) during JC’s challlenge of the Hodge texts? Rather good panto and curious given that even someone not in the cabinet (you, thm) had such a sensible and rational explanation of the events hours afterwards. poor show from TM and the faces on the blue front bench, let’s hope Corbyn runs with this and the ‘pilot’ is actually what it says on the tin.

Well done Hodge then. Curious why May needed to be so opaque about it then. Let’s hope the pilot is a success and extended to less, errr, ‘politically sensitive’ councils too, eh?

You are obviously a little confused Julian. Never mind. We certainly don’t need another referendum on Brexshit

No. The ‘swerve and patronise’ is below the standards of debate I have come to associate with you thm. The last answer was great: shame you didn’t type it first.

You are quite clear on your opinion of the results of both recent referendums (?referenda?) and the appalling misinformation that informed both debates. It seems quite clear you saw the problems and communicated them very well. So it’s no suppose to read you saying we don’t need another one. I am not sure what we disagree about in this respect (apart from your obvious distaste at being asked to comment on the ‘corbyn moment if the day’, which you seemed to take an interest in on another thread, on your own thread about Corbyn.
[edited for flirty smiley joke which was a bit crap]

:D

Oh, and Wolfgang!

teamhurtmore – Member
My dislike of referendums……really?

The smilies don’t paste across on here but you seemed/feigned interest in this story the other week:

Another bloody referendum

Strange you seem almost as keen as Theresa to avoid commenting on it today. Seems like a great result and a big relief for everyone in Surrey. Not least it’s cabinet ministers!

Your dislike of referendums is well documented on here thm. Wondered if you had any thoughts about the story above and the lucky escape you had?
Poor Theresa looked both ill-informed on this and failed yet again to grasp the ‘answers’ part of prime ministers questions…

Kimbers, ransos, it’s not just any conservative run council either is it? Look who the local MP’s are- couldn’t be more embarrassing (putting up council tax 15% to mitigate central government cuts and impact on local hospitals) if they hired a skywriter and wrote it in lipstick on Eric pickles’ naked form.

Theresa dismisses it as ‘fake news’ – I am curious how else you read the smoking gun those text messages to not come to similar suspicions to Labour and the Graun.

Also hugely funny imho how these texts got out into the public in the first place. Cue massive scary memo to everyone in in Surrey cc about confirming phone and email details before discussing sensitive stuff. Which I hope will also get leaked for our minor amusement too.

Surrey council tax referendum killed off by alleged sweetheart deal.

Well this looks embarrassing: Surrey council, home of Hammond and Hunt’s constituency has somehow pulled off the impossible and found a solution to the embarrassing possibility of a referendum to hike council tax by 15% to pay for social care. Which is of course great news for basically everybody in Surrey. The embarrassing part being the window into the process that we get from these text messages, and the coincidence of the embarrassment that the referendum would cause to the Secretary of State for health and chancellor.

Oh also Swatch tried something like it a number of years ago too: ‘ internet time’ I think they called it.

They had a go at it in post revolutionary France (late 1700s) -the 10 month calendar and 10 day weeks lasted for a few years but the clock never properly took off.
Plus we would have to change units of speed for vehicles/travel and also music, computer/electronic ‘clock’ etc.

Aaaah, that might be my favourite album by anyone ever. :D

I watch a couple of hours of TV a week, there is not a chance I would watch that rubbish.

:D
Sublime. We could just end the thread here and return to our trenches now.

Chestercopperpot if all that is the case then it’s no coincidence at all that it is Surrey that this is happening in (in terms of what a difference this would make to the working lives of their local MP’s :( )

Thm, comments on the BBC link i popped in my ninja edit on last page. You have to expand the bottom of the page.
I lifted that quote from a rather more poorly worded version of something I thought you might post after a couple of gins. :p

£200 on band D! 8O
That’s gonna ruffle a few feathers!

(From the ‘man in the street’ comments:

4 minutes ago
pension schemes are now pyramid funds (run with huge deficits)-

THM you are busy ;)

What do we make of Surrey then?
Sauce.
Heard on r4 earlier: Conservative bloke from massively conservative council with Hammond AND Hunt as local MP’s bemoans millions of pounds of cuts from central government and proposes 15% hike in council tax to savd local social care for the elderly. I think we can safely agree that if implemented, this is one way to help and ease the burden at the front and back end of the acute hospitals locally.

I am not sure I agree with the method: if this referendum goes through, will we have the implication that social care is no longer the ultimate responsibility of central government?

surely local authorities with more people on lower rates or not paying it through various exemptions, or more elderly and infirm people will find this harder to manage than Surrey? Can’t see it being quite as straightforward in say Liverpool or Sunderland!! Postcode lottery etc…

I will be very interested to see how this is campaigned and indeed what a very conservative group of voters will make of this. I am certain their MP’s will support this but who would willingly vote to put £££ on their council tax?

Aaaah, the Today programme, home of all the best Freudian slips.
Anyone else spot Paul Nuttall reassuring the nation that we are at the front of the queue because Trump is an Anglophobe? Smooooth! 8)

….I know that my annual salary is actually a small percentage of the operating costs of my employer to provide a service for the people I see. I am just the person they see in clinic but plenty more people and costs behind me allowing me to do all this. I.e. If we charged at cost to my patients (we don’t charge at all of course) then i can well imagine it being 5x my hourly salary without any danger of making a profit.
Even Relate with cheap premises, minimal overheads and support staff, charity status and relatively low wages compared to NHS family and couples therapists need to charge an average of £50-60 an hour just to break even.

Cost of running any kind of health premises is vast, it’s not just buildings furniture electricity and employees but the business of sntthing medical involving equipment, sterilisation, clinical waste and so on and so forth. With no margin of profit at all, simply the infrastructure around an hour’s work from a doctor that is paid exactly the same as a solicitor adds or rather multiplies the cost. In fact chewkw I am surprised you get 20-30 mins of a dentist (or rather the whole team etc behind them too ) for just £80: there must be a few people in the same day paying £45 for a 5 minute checkup subsidising you!

Ah! The classic right wing slight of hand: the poor are to blame for their poverty.

Classic davidtaylforth more like.
Funny how someone using basic characters on a screen can make something so funny out of the exact same sentence that some folk on this forum (and thread) would say in all seriousness. :D :D

I think our future queen but one demonstrates clearly that the idea of a lack of social mobility can be discarded comfortably

As above, but I raise you Marlborough College with no bursary. On of four G20 schools in U.K. alongside Stowe, Eton and Wellington. Most expensive day fees in U.K. but iirc she boarded and that is quite competitive in comparison with Marlborough just outside the most expensive 10% and costing slightly over the national average wage before tax for one child to board there. Social mobility indeed.

But back on topic I think the constitutional monarchy bit, unelected upper chamber stuffed with hereditary nobility and political party donors, and FPTP bother me more than a royal family even one as fancy-lookin’ as the UK’s.