30/11 Strikes.

Vonhelmet said:
I'd say it very much depends on what you expect from life. I earn £30k, my wife earns £10k. With a mortgage and two kids, it's pretty tight. We give a lot of money to charity, which I know most people don't, so that would free us up a lot if we didn't, but even then, I'd say our lifestyles are considerably more conservative than what a lot of people would want. We barely ever go out, for example, don't buy many new clothes, etc...
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Nobody is saying it makes you wealthy, but the BBC article made out like it was really tight even though this family lived in a £300k house, had 3 holidays a year IIRC and bought a late model car every few years. Oh the sheer horror.

BTW I assume you claim child benefit on top of your £40k household wages.

And yeah if things are tight it is nice to have the option of cutting giving a lot to charity, I certainly can't afford to do that and nor can the country although we do give away billions each year, including to countries with space programmes and nuclear weapons but I digress.
 
amigafan2003 said:
Yes.
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Hence striking while discussions are still ongoing?

No. Do not confuse "proposals" with "offers".
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Is it not because each sector requires a slightly different offer within the core affordability assessment?

The proposals set out the framework for the individual negotiations to take place in, the guiding principles to be used and the amount of funding available.

The fact that the unions continued to jump the gun before negotiations took place, or want to negotiate outside the framework is not the fault of the government.
 
amigafan2003 said:
Read your T&C's re: Special pay reviews. Still possible in collective bargaining - none of the unions business.

Quick extract from what I think yuor T&C's are:-
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While I appreciate the help, it's never going to happen.

I'll have to find my T&Cs but I don't think we have any provision for Special pay reviews and if we do it'll be up Spine points rather than grades.

The grades are more based on how many people we manage rather than any skill level.

As for the "higher than average levels of skills/experience", the trouble is while I do across my Government Department, I don't in the section I work in.
 
amigafan2003 said:
I'm impressed you made it across the picket line with all their harassment, bullying, violence and intimidation.

I bet your life is hell today isn't it wit the bullying of your peers and colleagues - bet the TU reps haven't stopped victimising you since you've been in.
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:D

It's been tough, but I'll get through it...
 
elmarko1234 said:
No.

In certain aspects we have had an increase in authoritarianism, but in others we have gained liberty.

This is not a socialist nation, we have sold off all of our public assets (energy/water/trains) - we are almost completely capitalist.

Wiki education below.

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology.Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by supra-personal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood.

To achieve this, fascists purge forces, ideas, people, and systems deemed to be the cause of decadence and degeneration. Fascists advocate the creation of a totalitarian single-party state that seeks the mass mobilization of a nation through indoctrination, physical education, discipline and family policy (such as eugenics).

That state is led by a supreme leader who exercises a dictatorship over the fascist movement, the government and other state institutions. Fascist governments forbid and suppress opposition.

From this definition you can quite clearly see we are not Fascist, or living under totalitarian rule - for a start we have media from both the left & right wing spouting bias rubbish.
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That is the incorrect definition of fascism. That is the definition that fails to distinguish fascism from authoritarianism. Italian Fascism is merely the operating of business by the state for profit. ie when the state takes control of private businesses in such a way like we have in the UK, with certain organisations that are not fully private but not fully public either. Socialism and fascism are pretty similar and can be hard to distinguish at times. People mistook fascism for Hitler's totalitarian democratic socialism, as such there is a big misconception that fascism is actually directly related to nazi'ism.

"Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible (sound familiar?) Totalitarian regimes stay in political power through an all-encompassing propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media (aka BBC), a single party that is often marked by personality cultism (our democracy defined), control over the economy, regulation and restriction of speech, mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror."

Sounds like the British government to me.

The British government is a totalitarian fascist/socialist state. It only fits that definition.

Because there is a monarchy that does not affect the definition of the state, because capitalism is unstoppable and exists in spite of fascism/socialism does not affect that definition either. The fact that this state heavily regulates this unconverted capitalist markets does not affect the definition of the state either.

So we might have a regulated market economy, but the state is still Neo-totalitarian fascist/socialist state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Fascism wow this article has been changed completely, nevermind that has now been modified.
 
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dirtydog said:
And this is exactly why the minimum wage has not helped low paid workers at all, quite the opposite. And nor has having uncapped housing benefit which the Tories are making some moves to tackle, although to predictable squeals from the left who think that capping benefits to £25k tax free a year (equivalent to a c.£35k job) is somehow evil and people can't survive on that.

BTW the BBC had an article yesterday seriously asking if it was possible to live comfortably on £40k a year.
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I earn about £27k (can't remember the exact) and with the wife getting around £13k a year, we actually struggled. Mainly down to paying of my education, and a few loans we had taken to consolidate things etc. With a child it it became pretty tough living 'comfortably', and we were always on edge. When all the maternity pay ended, it became exceptionally difficult to manage financially, and my wife HAD to go back to work, there just wasn't another option.

So I wouldn't really mock too muc about the £40k thing. If you don't have any debt it would be much easier, but you'd still have to be careful to be completely honest. It also depends on whether you have a house already, so had an investment (and probably less paying out than paying for rent).
 
dirtydog said:
Nobody is saying it makes you wealthy, but the BBC article made out like it was really tight even though this family lived in a £300k house, had 3 holidays a year IIRC and bought a late model car every few years. Oh the sheer horror.
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Well, yeah, I'll give you that. If we had lower childcare costs and didn't give so much to charity then our lives would be very comfortable. I read another article the other day, which I think someone linked on here, about what "rich" actually means, and it came out with a number of earning £97k a year to be "rich". I think some people are rather out of touch with how good things are.

dirtydog said:
BTW I assume you claim child benefit on top of your £40k household wages.
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Side rant...

We get child benefit and we get some tax credits. The tax credits thing is fun and games at the moment, though... We ditched a registered childminder in favour of an unregistered nanny, so we can't claim her costs for tax credits purposes. So in the past we could get the costs for a registered childminder who fed our children crap, gave our 2 year old a half hour nap on the sofa each day instead an hour and a half in a cot, kept the TV on the whole bloody time, drove our 5 year old around without a proper car seat... But we can't claim the costs of an unregistered nanny who actually gives a toss. So yeah, that registration regulation isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Sadly, the low tide mark for childminding is basically "Are you going to feed my children into a woodchipper and paint your house with the results" and people still pay through the nose for it.

So again, like the charity thing, this is something which we could trivially save money on if we could only find a decent registered childminder, but as it is we settle for an unregistered nanny because we'd rather our kids were actually looked after.
 
Scougar said:
I earn about £27k (can't remember the exact) and with the wife getting around £13k a year, we actually struggled. Mainly down to paying of my education, and a few loans we had taken to consolidate things etc. With a child it it became pretty tough living 'comfortably', and we were always on edge. When all the maternity pay ended, it became exceptionally difficult to manage financially, and my wife HAD to go back to work, there just wasn't another option.

So I wouldn't really mock too muc about the £40k thing. If you don't have any debt it would be much easier, but you'd still have to be careful to be completely honest. It also depends on whether you have a house already, so had an investment (and probably less paying out than paying for rent).
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To be fair whether you earn £40k or £400k, it is possible to live well, or to find it tough - it depends on your debts and your outgoings doesn't it. I would argue that it is certainly very possible to live well on £40k anywhere in the UK except London. But yes if you have accrued large debts and/or choose to live an expensive lifestyle relative to your income then it could be a struggle.

In fact we could say that about the nation as a whole. GDP of what, £1.5 trillion or something? Yet our nation can't (won't) live within its means and borrows 10% of its GDP each year because it can't get by on only £1.5tn.
 
I actually had the misfortune yesterday to be sitting have a coffee in the canteen where someone had left the latest Unite magazine so I pick it up for a quick gander.

It being about 16-20 pages long I was astonished to find the thing front to back in tales of woe and victimization. Seriously the Samaritans would do well advertising in that rag. On top of that the one sided carp about this pension argument was appalling with blame being thrown to the usual crowd of bankers, tories and anyone earning anymore than an average salary. And you wonder at some of the comments on here

Propaganda at its best..........
 
groen said:
People mistook fascism for Hitler's totalitarian democratic socialism, as such there is a big misconception that fascism is actually directly related to nazi'ism.
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What :confused: Hitlers Nazi party was neither Democratic nor Socialist. You do know the Nazi party was part founded by anti-communists don't you?

And don't start with the "why did they call themselves National Socialist German Workers Party then"?

I could call myself the King of England - doesn't make it true though does it?


Honestly groen, I can have a good debate with people I disagree with - Dolph and Castiel for example - but at least they know what they are talking about!
 
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amigafan2003 said:
What :confused: Hitlers Nazi party was neither Democratic nor Socialist. You do know the Nazi party was part founded by anti-communists don't you?

And don't start with the "why did they call themselves National Socialist German Workers Party then"?

I could call myself the King of England - doesn't make it true though does it?


Honestly groen, iIcan hold a good debate with people I disagree with - Dolph and Castiel for example - but at least they know what they are talking about!
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I do know what I am talking about. You probably have just never heard someone say such a thing. Fascism was actually quite popular until Mussolini went nuts and started genocide people. Then all the countries that had fascist system, converted to the socialism which was far more popular with the public at the time. Hitler rose to power thanks to his popularity, he did not come in with guns on his own people and takeover. He was democratic elected socialist from what i understand, how else did he fund his military? How else is any military funded but by a large tax base.

But then i would not associate all socialist systems with nazi'ism and authoritarianism. (well i would but not in this context, i would because i see all forms of the state as authoritarian, but to prevent confusion.) Just the same not all forms of fascist systems have to be associated with authoritarian despots and genocidal maniacs. Don't get me wrong, i am against socialism and fascism. I am just trying to correct the misconception in the history books.
 
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