[the-demi-god]

Or how about we stop this nonsense about multiple assemblies and have the UK governed as a whole from Westminster. Let's remove those layers of bureaucracy that dependent on England to subsidise them in the first place.[/QUOTE]

Well it was supposed to be tongue in cheek,
but if we are going to change how we are governed then remove that which is most expensive, that people feel they get the least out of ie Westminister if you happen to live anywhere near the south east of England then you won't feel excluded by government. The further north you go the more excluded and unrepresented people feel.
You do not have to come as far as Scotland to hear people complain about how out of touch the MPs are.
Bureaucracy? Westminister could run a university degree on how to milk it for all its worth. Ask yourself this when is the last time you heard of an MP being made redundant?
Now the rest of the public sector.
We all know that things have to change pensions included, but when are the people who run the country going to make ANY kind of sacrifice because the majority of people just don't see it. As we all know actions speak so much louder than words.

[dejongj]

Originally Posted by la gran siete

it isnt nonsense to the Welsh or Scots who now have a measure of control over their affairs

I appreciate that, there is always going to be a group who don't like it. How about if they want to control their affairs we let them control their affairs but do it by themselves. Currently it is almost like mummy and daddy let their children loose but provide a safety net for when it goes wrong and top it up. In that case we can indeed get rid of the Westminster representation or if they don't want to be by themselves we can have economies of scales by not duplicating several functions. Local representation can come from MP who look after their affairs just like they do for people from Bedfordshire or Surrey or where ever.

I'm probably biased as I have been on several pan UK projects and lets just say that despite the money coming from Westminster the Scottish Trust and Executive did not want to hear how implementations were done in England (actually the word used by the CIO was effen England to a team member of mine) and demanded a lot of duplication of effort severely increasing cost and besides doing it their own way not gaining anything. Was not good for the public purse at all.

[GAZBEROTTEN]

Not suprised you find a serious discussion like that a joke at all. Im starting to see why you constantly lose deates to la gran siete now.

Originally Posted by GasDad

What do you think Labour would be doing differently if they were in power

I am not superman and cant predict future events or even give an accurate guess if Labour got back in but they certainly at least wouldn't of caused strikes to happen and delt with it much efficiently and diligently than the conservatives ever could.

Originally Posted by dazza74

Because they've got the majority in the house of commons, because they formed a coalition and as a result bought of the lib dem vote. They didn't go it alone and run the risk of getting out voted when it came to getting legislation passed.

And how many of those people voted for them for the hell of it that never really understood what there policies where about. Reduce that amount and the people supporting them would of been much less than officially stated. The voting system can easily be abused and no voters are ever questioned on there votes either the votes are just accepted sadly.

Originally Posted by dazza74

And what do you think that will mean, support for the teachers or resentment. How many people in this country don't even have a pension? how many can only dream of earning what a teacher does?

I tell you what, trust me. Your sympathy for a train driver striking soon dissolves when you've done a 12 hour day in London, turned up @ Victoria to get home and forgot there's a strike and had to spend the night sleeping @ Work. It's easy to side with strikers when your not directly affected

How about while we are at it we let the Nurses and Police walk out, seems only fair. A few people drop dead on hospital wards, a bit of looting. Who cares ... let's all down tools it's summer. Who wants to work.

Im sorry to hear about your unfortunate situation 12 hours must of been torture to say the least. However your beef wouldn't be with the train driver it would be with the people who caused the strike. Pointless blaming the driver for protecting himself. You have to look out for yourself in this world mate trust me.

Also why you have brought up nurses and the police amazes me. They have nothing to do with train services unless you are implying nurses and policemen are driving trains now lmfao.

Originally Posted by dazza74

Becase Labour just spend money, they never confront any situation. They always offset a difficult decision to another day. That's fine but at some point you have a day of reckoning.

Whether we like it or not Gaz, we're a nation that has to borrow money. We've dug that hole for ourselves. You either pay one interest rate on the money you borrow or another interest rate. If we end up having to pay the rates Ireland and Greece pay then trust me, the last thing people will be moaning about in the public sector is pension reforms. They'll be seeing 20% pay cuts and many of their colleagues being out of job believe me.

If they didn't spend we would all of been screwed regardless. Nobody is happy the foreign banks messed up but pointless blaming Labour for that. See how things have fallen since Tony Blair has left yet getting him back as pm will fix this mess.

Originally Posted by la gran siete

it isn't nonsense to the Welsh or Scots who now have a measure of control over their affairs

That time will come for us very soon i can assure you with the way the coalition is carrying on.

[GasDad]

Originally Posted by the-demi-god

OAsk yourself this when is the last time you heard of an MP being made redundant?

6th May 2010

[dejongj]

Originally Posted by GAZBEROTTEN

Not suprised you find a serious discussion like that a joke at all. Im starting to see why you constantly lose deates to la gran siete now.

Gosh you do have an obsession there. I didn't know I was, didn't even know I was trying to a debate. I was voicing an opinion, unlike yourself I'm quite happy to listen to a sensible points.

So are YOU going on strike Gazberotten? All nice and well to determine other peoples positions, spout some propaganda but you do seem to be ignoring that point. Are you?

[sidicks]

Originally Posted by dejongj

Gosh you do have an obsession there. I didn't know I was, didn't even know I was trying to a debate. I was voicing an opinion, unlike yourself I'm quite happy to listen to a sensible points.

He seems to think it is me who is "constantly losing debates to LGS", not that anyone has ever voted on whose argument they support.

I think what he means is that him and LGS are similarly ignorant in terms of economics etc!


Sidicks

[Jamezinho]

Originally Posted by GAZBEROTTEN

I am not superman and cant predict future events or even give an accurate guess if Labour got back in but they certainly at least wouldn't of caused strikes to happen and delt with it much efficiently and diligently than the conservatives ever could.

As Labour did so effectively in the 70's?

Originally Posted by GAZBEROTTEN

See how things have fallen since Tony Blair has left yet getting him back as pm will fix this mess.

Blair knew what he'd created and wanted out before he got burned. Step forward Gordon Brown.

[dejongj]

Originally Posted by sidicks

He seems to think it is me who is "constantly losing debates to LGS", not that anyone has ever voted on whose argument they support.

I think what he means is that him and LGS are similarly ignorant in terms of economics etc!


Sidicks

LOL ouch Personally I think Gazberotten is indeed, but in my opinion LGS just has very different views, views I do not subscribe to and couldn't agree with but despite Gazberotten may mean they are equally ignorant, I do not think LGS's view are ignorant at all.

[sidicks]

Originally Posted by dejongj

LOL ouch Personally I think Gazberotten is indeed, but in my opinion LGS just has very different views, views I do not subscribe to and couldn't agree with but despite Gazberotten may mean they are equally ignorant, I do not think LGS's view are ignorant at all.

I don't think LGS is ignorant in general - his posts are too eloquent for that. However his views often don't make much economic sense!

Sidicks

[dejongj]

Well neither do labour policies Oh what wait a minute, what policies?

[la gran siete]

Originally Posted by sidicks

He seems to think it is me who is "constantly losing debates to LGS", not that anyone has ever voted on whose argument they support.

I think what he means is that him and LGS are similarly ignorant in terms of economics etc!


Sidicks

just have different opinions to you thats all i may not be as clued up as some about economics , just like 99.9% of the population arent, but I have sufficient nous to know that it is an inexact science and that even amongst so called experts, considerable differences exist.That leaves the rest of us the choice of which of those so called experts' comments wee would most likely feel comfortable with.Its very subjective and as far as i am concerned the voice of the right makes my skin crawl so i reject it .Similar with historians.I might watch Nial Ferguson programme with some interest but know that half way through it I will want to hurl things at my TV .Here is a man, defender of the Empire, who doesnt even attempt to achieve any sort of balance ie the pros and cons of Empire.David Starkey is another one.I fully remember the day i threw a saucepan in his general direction and missed the screen by a whisker.

It doenst matter whether we are experts or not ,we can still be armchair experts and most of us,I would say, are in a wide range of subjects, gleaning bits of information here and there that fits in with our view of the world. So, anyone who makes a categorical statement like it was all Labours fault gets met with a swift rebuttal .

[dazza74]

Originally Posted by GAZBEROTTEN

Also why you have brought up nurses and the police amazes me. They have nothing to do with train services unless you are implying nurses and policemen are driving trains now lmfao.

I've brought up nurses and police Gaz because they are contractually obliged to carry on working, they can't just down tools regardless of what they think of the reform to pensions due to the nature of their work. I've just got no time for people trying to hold this country to ransom, never have, never will.

[dazza74]

Originally Posted by GAZBEROTTEN

Im sorry to hear about your unfortunate situation 12 hours must of been torture to say the least. However your beef wouldn't be with the train driver it would be with the people who caused the strike. Pointless blaming the driver for protecting himself. You have to look out for yourself in this world mate trust me.

What got me Gaz, what really got me was those workers laughing at me in the corner in their uniforms. They could see I wasn't going anywhere you see and it was entertainment for them.

He wasn't protecting anyone, there was no leaves on the line to my knowledge that night. Nothing that could derail us.

[GAZBEROTTEN]

Originally Posted by dazza74

What got me Gaz, what really got me was those workers laughing at me in the corner in their uniforms. They could see I wasn't going anywhere you see and it was entertainment for them.

He wasn't protecting anyone, there was no leaves on the line to my knowledge that night. Nothing that could derail us.

You are judging a problem by the actions of a few people. It wasnt the labour government who caused this but the company staff members invovled . If the company didn't allow anyone of the street or from a training provider to be working behind that desk then you would of never had to experience that problem.

The problem is trainees are working there and not fully trained people. The company should of at least had its own training place and not trained them on the job. That way when the staff members starts the job on the first day they will know what they are doing and what not to do.

Hardly labors problem the company just took on anyone and didn't have there own training place. They had no excuse as they made hundreds of millions of pounds profit anyway.

For a few hundred thousand pounds they could of very easily done this yet they didn't.

[Anotherlimey]

Originally Posted by dazza74

What got me Gaz, what really got me was those workers laughing at me in the corner in their uniforms. They could see I wasn't going anywhere you see and it was entertainment for them.

He wasn't protecting anyone, there was no leaves on the line to my knowledge that night. Nothing that could derail us.

I doubt anyone was laughing at you Daz, iv'e been on picket lines and it is not a fun situation to be in, you are being pushed to the point where the only recourse you have is to protest and lose a day or more pay when you can least afford it, i have had a good laugh on a picket line as it's the only way to try and keep spirits up when the chips are down, so once again i doubt anyone was laughing at you mate, just trying to make the best of a crap situation.

[GAZBEROTTEN]

Originally Posted by Anotherlimey

I doubt anyone was laughing at you Daz, iv'e been on picket lines and it is not a fun situation to be in, you are being pushed to the point where the only recourse you have is to protest and lose a day or more pay when you can least afford it, i have had a good laugh on a picket line as it's the only way to try and keep spirits up when the chips are down, so once again i doubt anyone was laughing at you mate, just trying to make the best of a crap situation.

Not on for anyone to deal with that is it mate?

I wouldn't hold any judgement on Dazza if he took them to court for it and sewed them for a tidy sum.

Unbelievable eh?

[the-demi-god]

Originally Posted by GasDad

6th May 2010

Being voted out of office is not the same as being made redundant and as an MP it is part of the contract. The people wanted to be represented just not by the folk they voted out. There are still the same nos at Westminster no one walked in and said right we are cutting the number of MPs by 50 and the people going are you, you, you, you, you ,etc etc because that is what is happening elsewhere.
Go into a hospital ward and it was not the administrators jobs that were cut it was and is nursing jobs so there are fewer people doing the actual work but if anything goes wrong you can bet your bottom dollar that the nurses are the ones held responsible. I can hardly believe I am saying this I have spent years saying everyone has to be responsible for their own actions, if you get it wrong there are consequences, but now the pressure of work is such that if you take the time to do something properly someone else has to go with out care altogether you just do not have the time. Oh silly me "the quality of care will not suffer the NHS is safe in their hands" and 3 people can easily do the work of 10.
I am sorry I am sick to the back teeth of people who know nothing about the subject making dangerous decisions and telling people everything will be fine when they are not the ones doing the work.

[la gran siete]

Originally Posted by the-demi-god

Being voted out of office is not the same as being made redundant and as an MP it is part of the contract. The people wanted to be represented just not by the folk they voted out. There are still the same nos at Westminster no one walked in and said right we are cutting the number of MPs by 50 and the people going are you, you, you, you, you ,etc etc because that is what is happening elsewhere.
Go into a hospital ward and it was not the administrators jobs that were cut it was and is nursing jobs so there are fewer people doing the actual work but if anything goes wrong you can bet your bottom dollar that the nurses are the ones held responsible. I can hardly believe I am saying this I have spent years saying everyone has to be responsible for their own actions, if you get it wrong there are consequences, but now the pressure of work is such that if you take the time to do something properly someone else has to go with out care altogether you just do not have the time. Oh silly me "the quality of care will not suffer the NHS is safe in their hands" and 3 people can easily do the work of 10.
I am sorry I am sick to the back teeth of people who know nothing about the subject making dangerous decisions and telling people everything will be fine when they are not the ones doing the work.

i know someone who nurses in the private sector and things are far from rosey there. so much so she is looking for another job.It seems that job politics and cost cutting have made it almost impossible for her to her job properly.

[sidicks]

Originally Posted by the-demi-god

I am sorry I am sick to the back teeth of people who know nothing about the subject making dangerous decisions and telling people everything will be fine when they are not the ones doing the work.

Of course NOT making some of these decisions would also be dangerous - in many cases there isn't a 'no lose' situation and you have to choose what you believe is the lesser of two evils.

Sidicks

[McCol]

Originally Posted by dazza74

I've brought up nurses and police Gaz because they are contractually obliged to carry on working, they can't just down tools regardless of what they think of the reform to pensions due to the nature of their work. I've just got no time for people trying to hold this country to ransom, never have, never will.

Police can't strike but nurses can. It's just that most nurses and auxiliary nurses choose not to strike as we feel we have duty of care to our patients and a duty to serve the public.
I think the RCN union may have a no strike policy but Unison don't.

[Kebabhead]

Originally Posted by McCol

Police can't strike but nurses can. It's just that most nurses and auxiliary nurses choose not to strike as we feel we have duty of care to our patients and a duty to serve the public.
I think the RCN union may have a no strike policy but Unison don't.

Affordability comes in to play as well

[GAZBEROTTEN]

Originally Posted by Kebabhead

Affordability comes in to play as well

Strikes are imminent lets see if the coalition prevents it. If they dont yet another screw up from them we can all laugh at and mock them for

[dejongj]

Originally Posted by GAZBEROTTEN

Strikes are imminent lets see if the coalition prevents it. If they dont yet another screw up from them we can all laugh at and mock them for

Not all of us

I don't get it, for years we have had a government that didn't listen to the people and forced through their own ideas. Now we have a government that is willing to listen to reason and is man enough to change it plans according and it is not good either. Would you rather have they just barge through and do their own thing?

PS. Are you going on strike?

[Dave]

Originally Posted by dejongj

Not all of us

I don't get it, for years we have had a government that didn't listen to the people and forced through their own ideas. Now we have a government that is willing to listen to reason and is man enough to change it plans according and it is not good either. Would you rather have they just barge through and do their own thing?

PS. Are you going on strike?

I think you are naive if you believe any government regardless of the colours would not change their mind if it was politically expedient.

Where you term it as "listening to the people" some may say it was "getting it wrong in the first place".

[Rasczak]

Originally Posted by Dave

Where you term it as "listening to the people" some may say it was "getting it wrong in the first place".

I would agree with that - this Government seems to bungling its way from one policy to another. They rush into an ill-conceived cost saving measure, try to sell it, fail, dither for a while and backtrack.

What we haven't seen a clear policy on yet is how all these u-turns will be financed. The deficit reduction plans seems to be in tatters IMHO.

[icstm]

Surely this debate can be summarised as follows:

• People strike when they feel that there are changes happening that are not in their favour.
  
• The last government was spending more than it could even in the boom years (and Darling and Livingstone admit to that).
  
• So if you have to borrow lots when there is a huge tax take, you need to borrow even more when there is less tax coming in.
  
• However something else happened during that period and that additional money was borrowed but spent proping up certain industries (both on purpose and inadvertantly with quantitive easying)

So actually there is very little scope to borrow even more.
The problems being addressed in the public sector are only a fraction of the size they will be in the future.
Specifically both the NHS requirement (ie people living longer and expecting even more new and expensive treatments) and public sector pay and benefits (people living longer and pensions being completely unaffordable coupled with a unaffordable size of public sector).

So the only debate that can be had is how fast. How hard is, IMHO predetermined.
I would have suggested to govt that the NHS being proctected from cuts was a differentiator from Labour in a positive way, making structural changes at the same time has muddied that picture and nobody remembers that there is more money in the NHS than Labour pledges.

As for public sector changes, public support for these strikes will deomonstrate whether the govt is moving at the right pace or not, as I started saying some strikers were inevatable either now or over the next 12 mths no matter which party was in power.



Also note I said the public sector size was unaffordable, rather than oversized. The 2nd is a political point, based on what size you would like and what services you beleive the state should provide. Right now whatever services you would like, they are coming from borrowed money and causing further prolbems on top of their immeidate funding requirements.

[Kebabhead]

Originally Posted by Rasczak

What we haven't seen a clear policy on yet is how all these u-turns will be financed. The deficit reduction plans seems to be in tatters IMHO.

As Jim Royal would say

Zero budget deficit in 5 years "My arse"

[icstm]

Originally Posted by Kebabhead

As Jim Royal would say Zero budget deficit in 5 years "My arse"

Note that both Labour and Tories were talking about the "structural deficit" so neither were taking us to the great place that our ex territories are (Eg Canada and Australia)

[dejongj]

Originally Posted by Dave

I think you are naive if you believe any government regardless of the colours would not change their mind if it was politically expedient.

Where you term it as "listening to the people" some may say it was "getting it wrong in the first place".

I can definitely see the points you make and of course they could be seen as two sides of the same coin, I tend to have a more positive outlook on things which some may interpret as naive.

Even if they truly got it wrong in the first place wouldn't you rather have any party in power saw sense prior to implementing it opposed to being focussed on not to be seen to be weak/influenced by press/got it wrong in the first place or whatever negative connotation anyone wants to attribute.

I'll reserve my full judgement over the term and what the analyst who stand on the outside then say about it. I do not subscribe to short term point scoring...

Time will tell.

[the-demi-god]

Originally Posted by icstm

Surely this debate can be summarised as follows:

• People strike when they feel that there are changes happening that are not in their favour.
  
• The last government was spending more than it could even in the boom years (and Darling and Livingstone admit to that).
  
• So if you have to borrow lots when there is a huge tax take, you need to borrow even more when there is less tax coming in.
  
• However something else happened during that period and that additional money was borrowed but spent proping up certain industries (both on purpose and inadvertantly with quantitive easying)

So actually there is very little scope to borrow even more.
The problems being addressed in the public sector are only a fraction of the size they will be in the future.
Specifically both the NHS requirement (ie people living longer and expecting even more new and expensive treatments) and public sector pay and benefits (people living longer and pensions being completely unaffordable coupled with a unaffordable size of public sector).

So the only debate that can be had is how fast. How hard is, IMHO predetermined.
I would have suggested to govt that the NHS being proctected from cuts was a differentiator from Labour in a positive way, making structural changes at the same time has muddied that picture and nobody remembers that there is more money in the NHS than Labour pledges.

As for public sector changes, public support for these strikes will deomonstrate whether the govt is moving at the right pace or not, as I started saying some strikers were inevatable either now or over the next 12 mths no matter which party was in power.

Also note I said the public sector size was unaffordable, rather than oversized. The 2nd is a political point, based on what size you would like and what services you beleive the state should provide. Right now whatever services you would like, they are coming from borrowed money and causing further prolbems on top of their immeidate funding requirements.

I agree with most of what you have said but feel politicians compromise on bits of public opinion, and not necessarly on the important issues, I been listening to complaints about issues which are frankly petty in relation to the bigger picture, even allowing for the fact that we all think something is important if it affects us.
There are some issues which I think public input would be a positive thing as long as you accept that you are not going to please all the people all of the time and some you are not going to please at all. The NHS is just such a case instead of high handedly making decisions which do not solve the problems anyway and end up with both staff and public angry, look at what the NHS was set up to do, it was meant to provide care for everyday illnesses like appendisitis or prevention issues like immunisation, it was not designed to provide heart, liver & kidney transplants, desirable and all as they are, there is definately a case to be made for people taking out insurance to cover themselves for some of these very expensive treatments, the consultation would be to decide what was and was not covered by the NI. The alternative is to dramaticly raise nat ins so that it covers everything properly. If there was significant public participation in these decisions they would achieve a lot more and might actually solve a problem or two, and the NHS is not the only public service that you could apply this principal to. In theory we all know that nothing is for nothing but then folk listen to the big bonuses that some people are getting and think their job is not any more important than mine. There is a feeling of a great lack of respect of the people at the coal face doing the actual work. A little more parity would go a long way.

Cannot remember who said about the private medical sector suffering too, and I agree the staffing levels in some of them are close to dangerous but the staff cannot complain or they would be .... encouraged to leave and with unemployment levels as they are ..well not a good idea.
The strikes are a bad solution to a bad problem but if people feel it is the only way they can get the politicians to listen, surely it says more about the failure of democracy than a willingness to solve the problems.
It will be interesting to watch the Greek situation unfold.