magicjuan
Player Valuation: £60m
Ok. Where are we going? Do I need to bring sandwiches?
General strike/protest
- Thread starter magicjuan
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Ok. Where are we going? Do I need to bring sandwiches?
Sounds very much like a Socialist society you're talking about there. Just need to add a proper wage and long term security and we're back on track. We could even invest in job creation that doesn't revolve around private profit and allow people to define for themselves what skills are valuable and who they want to work for.
I'd also replace sympathetic with empathetic. Understanding the problems people face doesn't mean we have to show sympathy. I think most disabled people in particular would hate that idea.
The Cowboy
Player Valuation: £60m
I meant sympathetic the sense that a suitable job would avoid exacerbating the illness/injury that is keeping them out of work.
Indeed. It's remarkable that a government that spends £217 billion on benefits and tax credits can be seen as cruel. They may spend less than previous governments, yes, but to brand a body that spends such vast sums as not giving a [Poor language removed] or trying to actively exterminate certain types is madness.
As a point of reference, the OECD provide stats on this, and the UK spends roughly $8,000 per head on welfare (at PPP). That compares favourably to barbaric countries like New Zealand, Portugal, Japan, South Korea and Canada. Heck, it's $2,500 per head more than the Czechs spend, and I don't see people dying on the street when I visit there.
A bit of context does no harm and it helps to avoid such hyperbolic statements imo.
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......the key issue for me is the major shrinkage of the public sector. Whilst that in itself significantly contributes to the austerity drive this approach is more about ideology. The result of this is a significant reduction in public service provision but the public have voted for it and that's democracy.
We had by many accounts the biggest global recession since the Great Depression, and the state is still spending vastly more than it raises in taxes. Is it realistic to expect a) no negative consequences of such a big dip in economic fortunes, and b) the state to continue borrowing vast sums to continue spending what it was before?
If you've worked in the public sector in any guise, I'm sure you can appreciate that usually in order to get anything done whatsoever requires a whole lot of compromise and horse trading. It's incredibly rare, in my experience, to have anything ideologically ploughed through.
....I've got close on 41years public sector service, my wife is similar, my daughter is a surgeon and my son and daughter in law are teachers. Public sector shouldn't be about profit, it's about service provision. I absolutely accept that changes in government maintains a status quo, more specifically the service delivery under a Labour administration is immediately enhanced but over time there is a lot of waste. Conservatives shrink government until it becomes so bad the public complain.
It's a cycle. Working within a government department, though, I know which administration is better for the public.
Clint Planet
Utter Cad.
Have you got a new job as a Tory spin doctor?
Clint Planet
Utter Cad.
If one may look at "waste" as "unproductive money" then "profit" too can be seen as unproductive since it is money which is redirected elsewhere, away from the client. I am all for being as efficient as is reasonably possible but "efficiency" is too often a trojan horse concept for profiteering neoliberals.
Have you got anything else to contribute? Looking over the past few pages, Bruce seems to be one of the only ones supporting his arguments with facts and figures. Everyone else is just saying that Tories are killing disabled people and calling it a day
....I don't really see 'profit' in Government, it's more about 'income' from the likes of HMRC.
Donald Twain
Vide cor meum
count me in,weather should be alright about then
Clint Planet
Utter Cad.
Oh, do forgive me for mocking the disingenuousness of a post which tries to spin the fact that the government has just given tax breaks to the wealthy whilst simultaneously cutting disability benefits into some enormous act of benevolence for which we should all be tugging our forlocks and thanking Gideon most kindly, sir.
Clint Planet
Utter Cad.
No, I was thinking of the creeping privatisation that's going on in the public sector.
This academies nonsense is appalling. Just awful. I despair for the future of our kids. Seriously thinking of bailing out of teaching within the next 15 months.
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