Saturday, Jan 09, 2010
What Gordon Brown didn't want you to know.....
Times online: Britain faces ‘toughest cuts for 20 years’
''Alistair Darling has warned that Britain faces its toughest spending cuts for 20 years if Labour continues in office. The Chancellor, indicating a dramatic shift in his party’s election strategy, tells The Times today that severe spending restraints are “non-negotiable” if he is to bring down the £178 billion budget deficit''
Posted by hpwatcher @ 07:54 AM (2014 views) Add Comment
36 Comments
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1. hpwatcher said...
Gordon Brown obviously had a great talent for guile. Take this episode, if he wasn't so weak there is no way we woud have had this degree of honesty; the usual Brown style is bullying, devious and political.
2. taffee said...
You have to hand it to these guys.....they keep stealing the initiative from the very weak 'I just want to be popular' Cameron
Cameron said all this months ago,then watered it down only for labour to steal the limelight again
God help us if cameron gets in
3. Funkydung said...
Is this a good indication of just how close we are to having our AAA rating removed? There has been a lot of talk about this over the last few days and clearly Darling and Brown are starting to take note. If they don't at least start talking tough on how to reduce the defecit then we will be downgraded before the election.
4. hpwatcher said...
God help us if cameron gets in
The question is now rather academic. UK is pretty much finished either way.
5. taffee said...
This is my manifesto
let businesses fail,raise interest rates to 4-5%....what will happen now would it crash like darling says?
well,the businesses that survive will begin hiring staff and the people that lose their homes will push government to build council houses of the 5 million they sold off...this will boost the construction industry and our kids could buy a starter home
stop all immigration on the basis its pointless increasing the population in times like this
probably a vote winner!
6. taffee said...
oh and raising interest rates would encourage people to save boosting banks balance sheets,as asset prices fell banks would have money to lend and feel safer doing so.
7. Alfie said...
What Gordon Brown didn't want you to know....
But wasnt it obvious anyway? Even if we had Churchill in we will have to have cuts, how else do you pay 200 nill debt
8. alan_540 said...
...trebles all round!
Unless you're one of the unlucky ones who get sacked.
9. techieman said...
"you have to hand it to these guys". I sometimes wonder why we are taught what we are taught at school. This election will be won on dumbing down the arguments. Thats why even though GB is unpopular Labour could feasibility still win, and explains why "thinkers" arguments - e.g. GB didnt as chancellor do anything to quell the bubble, wont hold water, SO LONG AS the average person laps up the "it was a global recession, and we have managed to do everything to get us out of it b*llocks". They forget that during the "global???" boom GB was taking credit for the illusionary increases in our standard of living to be paid for by the next generation.
So why would they lap it up? Because the majority have made money and are scared of what a draconian tax regime will do. GB is trying to contrast "investing for the future" with Tories "Tax and squeeze services until the pips squeak" - in other words until we get services that we can actually afford. The repayment plan will be modified because the world will sink into another leg of the recession whereupon GB will blame the rest of the world (not doing enough) if he is in office or where the tories will be the fall guys if they win.
In the next two parliments if the Tories get in - it will be "well look at the debt per capita under labour" "it will take us more time to sort this out" etc etc. Because thats what always happens - a kind of unwritten pact. And when they cant use that any more? hmmmm i can see a pattern!
Perhaps thats why its easy for non thinkers to get 17 A Levels??
I suppose if the dumbing down were to go far enough we would only vote based on an anti GB vote, or at an extreme whether people can find their way to the ballot box and fill in the forms correctly.
I dont agree with Taffee's immigration policy, but then i suppose i wouldn't. The mention of it and the fact that it may be a "vote winner" only proves my point.
I do (for once) agree with hpwatcher, The choice really is do you want sh1t on your cornflakes or p1ss in your morning coffee.
Both are less than palatable.
10. taffee said...
I don't know why people get funny when you mention immigration....its seems sensible to reduce the population all round imo..in fact the biggest threst to the world is alarming population growth,and lets bface it if they were serious about climate change(which they are not) then reducing the population would be a prudent move
In 1940 there were 2 billion people now its over 7 billion...frightening
11. techieman said...
Taffee - i am not basing it on being funny, its based on economics pure and simple. There are social arguments for and against immigration but to me the more important social argument is how its effected. The main problem we have is that immigration policy is not developed in socila terms. We are more interested in numbers (wrong in my view) than how best to integrate cultures into our society but with a base moral code.
Eventually numbers sort themselves out IMO. We signed up to complete mobility of labour when we embraced the EU. Germany for example encourages Turks to immigrate so that their productivity pays for the German ageing population. Without that the Germans may really come unstuck in their pension funding.
Re population growth - yes that's not the same as immigration though is it. And by reducing population i assume you mean population growth rates. Sometimes brevity is good but other times you aren't saying what you mean.
Unless........???
12. techieman said...
"The German pension system has come under serious strain during the last decade and is an issue you will see widely covered in the media. Each working generation pays directly for the prior generation's pensions so the system needs to balance payments from current workers with those to pensioners. Low birth rates and increasing life expectancy means less people are financing more pensioners. High unemployment has also reduced payments into the system.
Many economists are calling for more immigration of young workers to balance this out."
http://www.justlanded.com/english/Germany/Germany-Guide/Jobs/Pension-insurance
See what i mean?
13. taffee said...
obviously I'm talking population growth.....there must be a tipping point,I mean in india 40% of people don't even have electricity....and they reckon population will hit 2 billion by 2020....sounds like complete nightmare to me
14. sovietuk said...
Making cuts is not tough. For a start get rid of all the silly made up jobs that have been created by New Labour over the last 13 years. Presumably these cuts will also not affect essential services so in that case we have spent the last 13 years being taxed to the hilt paying for "non essential" services or services that should not have been there in the first place other than to place an extra burden on the tax payer. Just like the advice "don't travel unless its absolutely essential in the snowy weather" oh but sorry you only get paid if you turn up for work so therefore your bills are not essential we now see what a scam the last thirteen years have been (unless of course you have made up job and probably get paid during the snowy weather anyway).
15. hpwatcher said...
I do (for once) agree with hpwatcher, The choice really is do you want sh1t on your cornflakes or p1ss in your morning coffee.
Both are less than palatable.
Yes. Moreover, I just don't think the general public really want to know about this. Most just want house prices to stay high and the good times to continue. That's why I think a bond - and then possibly a currency crisis - is the only outcome.
16. techieman said...
sovietuk - i saw on the news the other day that ASDA, TESCO etc were telling people that if they didnt come in then they wouldnt be paid unless they made up the hours. However HMRC would pay you if you didnt get in and the implication was you wouldnt need to make up the hours....... hmmm.
The interesting thing is for example of the whole store was closed because not enough people could get in to have it functioning and yet you tried to get in.... i suppose there is the odd argument but generally i would have to go (being the son of a "self employed" grocer!) with Tesco!
17. stillthinking said...
I think people are number numbed. Even if government borrowing is reduced by only 30 billion next year, no way near sufficient, thats a thousand pounds per worker of spending gone. Also, over the next decade we will struggle to maintain power supplies at today's level, there isn't an energy infrastructure for growth.
Cuts are not going to lead to growth, they are a forest fire leading to green shoots, we should have cut in 2007 while we had some funds available to draw on. After several years of delaying and borrowing to forestall, whenever I read of our imminent economic recovery I wonder what real advantage there is to deluding the general population, when the reality is that we have booked ourselves in for an unnecessarily hard landing. The government (either) doesn't have any choices or decisions to make.
I agree with hpwatcher@3. We all get much poorer irrespective of Darling or Cameron.
18. letthemfall said...
Asda were on the news saying they would help their employees work from home, though I imagine this would not apply to those who man the tills. However, I expect it is possible for HMRC staff to do at least some work at home. Against the cost of the loss of work - which I tend to think is an arbitrary figure because work can often be made up later - is the potential cost of employee injury on their way to work, resulting perhaps in a greater staff-sickness cost.
Another way of looking at this is that the public sector looks after its employees better; and are consequently likely to do a better job.
As for the "silly made up jobs", I'd like to know what they actually are. The majority of public spending is on health and welfare.
19. techieman said...
HI ltf: "Asda were on the news saying they would help their employees work from home" - yep management speak. I agree that people perhaps shouldnt come in but surely they should be expected to make up the time - either in public or private sector. I cant see how else it can be argued.
"Another way of looking at this is that the public sector looks after its employees better; and are consequently likely to do a better job." and you really believe that?
Im really at a loss to understand what you are getting at. Simply put my view is that if people cant get to work (event through no fault of their own) and if they cant contribute to a service or the production of goods that their employer is able to make a profit on then why should an employer pay them? Whether that employer or employee is public sector or private sector. Do you think they should be paid?? Why? I thought you were against inequalities?
Could they work from home- yes and if they can then i agree they obviously dont need to have pay docked then. But being able to WFH depends on what you do - its not sector specific but more job specific.
20. shipbuilder said...
I know this isn't the point being made, but in my last job if I thought it was unsafe to go into work then I didn't go in and generally took it as a holiday. No big deal.
My safety vs an employer's profits is really no contest and my employers, being the sort of company that looks forward rather than getting misty eyed about the days before the evils of health and safety, agree.
What's so desperately sad about today's society is people so easily buying into the prioritising of money and the economy over everything else, including their own lives.
How naive the former communist states were, needing secret police to get similar levels of compliance.
21. clockslinger said...
Seems to me immigration policy is driven by what the CBI want, simply endless flexible labour at below minimum wage. Don't like massive immigration? Blame Tesco, Sainsbury Morrisons and Asda.
22. alan_540 said...
@18 ... Quite agree : Modern economic slavery is much more effective than the old fashioned totalitarian type.
Modern politics has more than caught up with George Orwell.
23. letthemfall said...
techieman
I suppose it depends on whom one thinks should stand the loss. The employer or employee. In the past it has always been the employee, but the past had pretty brutal employment regimes. If one misses, say, 3 days work - quite possible at present - it would seem fairly onerous to make up that time, though not out of the question. A shop employee could find that difficult, though, unless working for a long-opening supermarket. Others don't work flat out all the time and could do the undone work with a bit of a spurt later.
I am against inequality, especially the inequality that exists between capital and labour. In circumstances where the employer can't possibly get to work I think it is reasonable for the employer, especially the Tescos, to stand the loss, such as it is. Agree with shipbuilder about the priority here.
(Thanks for your reply on the EW thread BTW).
24. mark wadsworth said...
LTF says "the majority of public spending is on health and welfare".
Well that's not true is it? Cash welfare payments are around £150 billion and NHS spending is £100 billion out of total public spending £600 billion.
Seeing as a third of NHS spending is not on health but on quangocracy, TV advertising, stop smoking campaigns, bureacrats, re-branding, PFI, PPP waste and so on, that gets down actual welfare and health spending to slightly over a third of government spending.
While we're on the subject, actual spending on education in schools is around £50 billion.
25. markj69 str05 said...
@8.Taffee... Re- population. It's a bigger problem than people realise. I heard a good piece on R4 yesterday about exponential growth. See:- 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY'. Worth a look.
Regarding NHS costs, I heard that part of the NHS, or Trust budgets were helping out with gritting the other week (Or something like that). Idea being to invest in eradicating the accidents before they happen! Maybe they should invest more in contraception (stemming the front end), and start a cull at the age of say 80-85yrs (Trunkating the top end)!!
26. techieman said...
"In circumstances where the employer can't possibly get to work I think it is reasonable for the employer, especially the Tescos, to stand the loss, such as it is."
I cant see who the employer is should make any difference to the principle. If i have employed someone to do a job and i pay them, give them benefits and holidays then why should i pay them when they dont turn up. If i am a shareholder, i would want the people that work for me, be it management or employees to erm work! If i am a taxpayer i want the people i pay taxes to, to work for that price.
If you employ a plumber to fix your leaking tap and he tries to get there but cant because he gets stuck in the snow - would you pay him??
LTF it strikes me you have never had people work for you - staff are often a complete nightmare i can tell you, from my father's experiences. Then you get pilfering, breakages and upteen taxes and red tape thrown at you, some try to fiddle you and now you want to pay staff for not fulfilling their contractual obligations!?!?!
You remind me of the bloke that doesn't live next door to idiots who think it fun to vandalise your possessions, but then gives then 30 chances and then finds them guilty and gives them a community order that they dont serve.
If an employer doesn't provide what he should in terms of benfits min wage, etc. then he should rightly be punished. I just think that works both ways.
27. techieman said...
i assumed you meant : "In circumstances where the EMPLOYEE can't possibly get to work I think it is reasonable for the employer, especially the Tescos, to stand the loss, such as it is."
28. markj69 str05 said...
Here here Techie. Good common sense stance.
29. letthemfall said...
markj69..:"Maybe they should invest more in contraception (stemming the front end), and start a cull at the age of say 80-85yrs (Trunkating the top end)!!"
Sound and measured thinking markj.
techieman: "You remind me of the bloke that doesn't live next door to idiots who think it fun to vandalise your possessions, but then gives then 30 chances and then finds them guilty and gives them a community order that they dont serve."
That's unfair and unreasonable given what I said. Criminals should be properly punished under law in my view, including vandals; unfortunately it doesn't always work out that way.
Yes, I can understand problems with dodgy staff, and we have no doubt all seen incompetent individuals, often in high positions. But there is a difference between these and good staff who simply can't get to work. To be fair it does depend on the financial strength of the employer; small companies with only one or two staff may find it harder to meet any loss. And there is the risk element, which I know you understand, which trades off the loss of a day or two's work against the greater cost of sick pay for a member of staff with a broken leg. Work can often be made up, but where it can't a large company has the option of placing onerous compensatory demands on the employee, perhaps at the risk of seeming overbearing and alienating them.
It's a question of balance, but given that employees are the most important asset a company has, and who return more value than they are paid (the whole point of employing staff in business), a company should reasonably, if it can afford to, return this relatively small benefit.
30. letthemfall said...
mark w
Perhaps I should have said the biggest slice. Social security, NHS and Education combined, between which there seems to be accounting or partitioning overlaps going by the variety of figures I've seen, account for about 60% of spending.
I certainly think PFI has wasted a lot of public money (in that private companies have ripped off the taxpayer), but the other things you mention, the campaigns particularly, surely have their own value, probably quantifiable to some degree. As for bureacracy, is not this really a meaningless term used to synonymise the myth of waste unique to the public sector?
31. techieman said...
classic question evading ltf - you really should be in politics.
I repeat : If you employ a plumber to fix your leaking tap and he tries to get there but cant because he gets stuck in the snow - would you pay him??
its then crass hypocrisy to suggest that an employer should pay an employee for not working. Yes i agree with compassionate leave but really a bit of snow? I am not suggesting they put themselves at risk - even shippy when he propsed that said it was not relevant to the point i made. You are trying to make an untenable position tenable.
You seem to always want one sided equality for employees, without recognising that without an employer they wouldnt have a job. I have said i dont think employers should take advantage of employees but surely that works both ways!
Also what about the employees that do make it in? Is it fair for them to subsidise those that cant? How does that support equality?
32. shipbuilder said...
techie, I think we are getting into the realms of what flashman described in a recent post about balanced arguments - people put forward a point of view to try and balance an opposing view.
From my own point of view, I generally see views here supporting the employer - as well as valid points about bureaucracy, taxes and so on, too much of the usual 'evils of health and safety/unions/employment laws etc etc.
In my own experience as an employee of a fair employer and a manager of staff, better treatment of staff always, without exception, results in multiples of better performance, even sometimes beyond the point where even the most 'liberal' of managers might stop.
The contract is an equal one that benefits and requires commitments from both parties - salaried employees are not paid in increments of work and hence time of is made up and in many case much more in unpaid overtime etc. In a more straightforward contract, your point is valid, although as stated, I believe that better benefits give better rewards.
Many employers would like to get back to the days of permanent job shortages where people were glad to have a job, but that is a reflection of their attitude rather than reality. In a healthy economy, it is good employees that call the shots and can pick and choose employment, as much as that galls those who prefer the traditional master/servant relationship.
33. letthemfall said...
techieman
I don't call you crass and I'd thank you for not insulting me, even if you do disagree with what I say; I really don't expect it from you.
The element of risk is not financially irrelevant because most employers offer sick pay. This has nothing to do with compassion, although what the two costs might amount I couldn't say.
I do recognise the role and rights of the employer; but, equally, without employees the employer wouldn't have a business. And given that our economy is biased towards employers these days, my sympathy tends to be towards the employee. I may be putting my argument a little more strongly than merited, but that is just to counterbalance against your position. I don't claim to be exactly right, but I think I make a fair point.
34. techieman said...
LTF - i wouldnt call you crass had you just responded by answering my question. if it makes you feel better i will remove the term crass (but not hypocrisy). I have a balanced view - both parties enter into a contract with their eyes open.
If the employer does wrong i would be happy to agree and say that what he does is unfair. I have illustrated that in my comments. Of course you have a right to disagree with me but again i would feel a little put out if i was the employee who did make it in and was told that the next day off i had was holiday, whereas a fellow worker had the day off previously but did not have to take it as holiday.
I agree it has nothing to do with compassion. I was just trying to illustrate that uncontracted paid leave on compassionate grounds - death in the family is, imo, the only time when paying someone when they dont work is justified.
Its not a case of being sympathetic to any party. I am not - thats my balance. If someone works for an employer and doesnt get what he is due, i would be the first to say thats wrong. Surely being sympathetic to one contracting party is unbalanced!
I am aware of employment issues being difficult, but that is precisely why there are contracts of employment! If an employer wants to make an ex gratia payment to employees as a gesture then fair enough - but as i said that would raise an eyebrow with other employees.
You have still sidestepped my question re your plumber..... unless of course you are a plumber yourself!
35. letthemfall said...
techieman
Rather graceless of you. As I implied, I thought you avoided rudeness just because you disapproved of others' arguments, unlike a good number here. In fact I think you might have once argued against it. Oh well.
Your plumber example. A plumber would make it on another day, putting in the extra time, as I've said that many employees would where possible.
As for balance, well we live in an unbalanced society, which I'm suggesting you do not take into account in your arguments. Mostly the employee gets the thin end of the wedge. Beyond that I have nothing to add, other than to recommend shipbuilder's above comments to you.
36. techieman said...
i dont think it rude to call an argument hypocritical ... when i think it is. I think you are being overly sensitive there. Its not like i used any expletives, i have withdrawn the crass "insult".
I think its fine for each of us to have different views and to express them. Perhaps you have a point i could grudgingly accept. The problem is that not all employees are conscientious. similarly not all employers are flexible when they probably should be. The employee getting the thin end of the wedge really depends. I have know people on the wrong end of an employment award when the employee has clearly swung the lead, but procedure has not been followed. In one instance the action bankrupted the company with the loss of all the other 10 employees jobs.
By the same token i accept that people set up companies that go bankrupt (perhaps to avoid paying a legitimate tribunal award only to start trading under another name etc. As you say there are injustices on both sides, and we live in an unjust world.
Of course speaking personally i have been an employee and self employed. I think in some offices there is alot of politics amongst the staff when there shouldnt be. It just strikes me as very strange how people react. However try as i might i do find it a basic proposition that people get paid for doing something. If they dont do it they generally shouldnt be paid.
As for the plumber i give you credit for knowing exactly where i was going, i give you that much credit. I respect your intelligence although not your argument. I think you would be rightly outraged should the plumber present you a bill for trying to get to your place to fix your leaky tap but then presenting you with another bill for actually fixing it. Of course he could fix it another time - but you are arging that he should be paid for both fixing it another time and trying to get there on the day to fix i. I can see no other logical conclusion, which is why i think yes it is a hypocritical argument.
As for shipbuilders argument i accept what he is saying, but he isnt saying what you are. Really the only place where i would accede is where the employment contracts allow for this (time off for not being able to get in by public transport etc) and allow for the equal treatment across all employees. Whether that "good" treatment of employees results in them more diligently carrying out their duties and given their employer an advantage over others remains to be seen and is, i will admit, contingent on the industry and the competition within it.
In summary i probably err on the side of the employer and you on the employee. Fair enough - we are prejudiced by our experiences and position in life. I often can see your point and i think to be fair to me i have said i have moved much more toward your viewpoint, based on coherent and powerful arguments that you have made.
However, in this case i really end up saying " a fair days wages for a fair days work".