30/11 Strikes.

Let's just privatise everything, may as well.

Take away pension scheme too and make people save up for their retirement fund.

If there's a fire in your home the fire brigade may want the money up front before they put the fire out, that would be a laugh......
 
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mrbell1984 said:
Let's just privatise everything, may as well.

Take away pension scheme too and make people save up for their retirement fund.

If there's a fire in your home the fire brigade may want the money up front before they put the fire out, that would be a laugh......
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Is anyone even saying that in this thread? Even Dolph, arch-libertarian that he is, still advocates publicly funded, if not publicly owned, services. Or is it just easier to argue against a made up extreme rather than what people are actually suggesting?
 
wordy said:
Yes and no, We (pulic servants) are an easy target so we are having our contracts changed. So yes, as the Tories ar the ones doing this then yes they have provked the strike. However I think that any gov would see us as an easy target and would possibly do the same
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The Tories demonised the public sector workers at the last election. Their attacks, after two enquiries, are shown to be rubbish. They created the anger in the public sector - now they are reaping the whirlwind.
 
Dolph said:
I wonder how many public sector employees would remain in role if the public sector had to earn it's money rather than steal it? How many are providing productive, customer driven services that people would choose over potential competition...
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The point of public service workers is they are a SERVICE, somethiong YOU have been unable to get your head round. Your constant paranoia about taxes being theft are delusional.
 
Lord-Jaffa said:
Yes but how does that compare to the same private sector pension, as far as i'm aware, they will still pay less and receive more than the private sector equivalent ?
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There's no doubt that most private sector pensions are much worse, which is why in a few years we'll start to see awful, crippling poverty starting to affect pensioners. I'm expecting life expectancy in this country to actually decrease in the next few decades as a result of poverty and the government's NHS changes. The question is, why do you think that workers should just accept a change to a worse pension when their employers have already made a commitment to their current pensions? There are lots of reasons why the public sector get these pensions, if it's so generous why not apply for a job in the public sector? I certainly wouldn't.
 
Xordium said:
If an equivalent leftish post had been produced you would have been all fallacy this and fallacy that - steal lol.

How many UK companies are providing productive, customer driven services that people would choose over potential international competitors ... err ... loads obviously it's why we have such a great manufacturing base!

How about this for a solution: private companies make themselves and their employees competitive on the international market and all accept 95% pay cuts :rolleyes:
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Ahhh! That idiotic fallacy again...

Why cut wages etc in manufacturing in the UK? We have a thriving manufacturing industry, one of the mosp profitable in the world in fact, no need to cut wages, that is done automatically by competition between companies.

Just because companies don't make large steel beams and cars using hundreds of employees any more doesn't mean we don't have a manufacturing industry... For example I'd wager your phone wouldn't exist if it wasn't for british companies...;)
 
Sister in law is a teacher but isn't striking (not part of the union and said she wouldn't have even if she was). Cousins gf is a teacher but is, but didn't want to but she was the only one who was going to be at school so its shut.
 
Third Opinion said:
I sympathise with the civil servants to an extent. The only thing is I work in the private sector so I have paid loads of money into pension schemes that are practically worthless now and will probably have to work longer than them anyway.
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This seems to be the biggest issue in the whole Public v Private debate. The private pension people begrudge the fact that the public pension is better than their own and it sticks in their throats especially now that they have "seen their pots diminish in the past years"

What I would like to see answered by the zealots of this argument is this - Is it the public service workers that are to blame for the private pension pots to now be worthless?

You do realise that, unlike private pension schemes, public pension schemes do not rely on investment in the stock market to get good returns. Public pension schemes rely on the money coming in to sustain itself i.e. self sufficiency. It is not invested in other markets and the risk is therefore non-existent.

The area to "blame" for the private pensions is the stock market which has taken a huge drop in the past years resulting in loss of value of any pension schemes linked to them. Who is to blame for the poor investment choices for each respective pension fund? Fund Managers?


Also - a lot of public service workers pay a LOT of money into the scheme every year. Granted, not all of them do, but there are some that pay a lot for it. For the private pension people - do some sums and find out what your actual pension contributions are as a percentage of your monthly salary (pre tax as you get tax relief on pensions). Does it come close to some current private pension contributions of 11.5% of gross salary?




Secondly - I see some comments on here that are just sound-bites and total crap because the poster is unwilling or unable to back it up e.g.:


101001101 said:
Strike all you want but China will be laughing at you, the country is superficially bankrupt
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101001101 said:
Not yet, but.......
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Want to actually explain this or is it just a comment you heard and are regurgitating it without even knowing what you are talking about?



Dolph said:
I wonder how many public sector employees would remain in role if the public sector had to earn it's money rather than steal it?
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Really? Can you explain the manner in how the public sector is "stealing" money
 
I'm a teacher in a Junior school and I'm not on strike. I don't believe that punishing the children in my class is the way to go about things, but maybe as a new teacher and being fairly young (24) I've got too simplistic a view on it.

Having said that, out of 25 teachers only 1 is on strike. The caretaker and kitchen staff are, so the Head is going to open up and lock up, and the kids have to bring packed lunches for the day.

The Infant school next door to us and the High school in our town are going to be shut though, so us being open might be a bad thing for some parents - if they have children at the closed infants or high school, and they're having to take the day off anyway, some of them might have preferred to go out for the day or something. So I wonder if we'll have poor attendance next Wednesday.
 
Xordium said:
So I take it you missed the sarcastic :rolleyes: to denote an equally stupid view put forward by the other side? Yep, guess you did. ;)
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Oops...:p

Unfortunately after much consideration I took this bit as sarcasm..

loads obviously it's why we have such a great manufacturing base!
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Unfortunately way too many people on this forum seem to think the UK doesn't manufacture anything...
 
I'm not striking, but that day is my day off. My Manager asked me to go in, I'm still waiting for overtime pay from 3 months ago, so I refused. :)
 
vicisthebest said:
I'm a teacher in a Junior school and I'm not on strike. I don't believe that punishing the children in my class is the way to go about things, but maybe as a new teacher and being fairly young (24) I've got too simplistic a view on it.
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I fail to perceive it as punishing children. Either way, I hope you are consistent and held that view in regard to the royal wedding earlier this year...
 
Floogie said:
I fail to perceive it as punishing children. Either way, I hope you are consistent and held that view in regard to the royal wedding earlier this year...
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Didn't get the choice - that wasn't a strike, it was a national day off... the local authority gave us an extra day so school closed a day earlier for the summer holidays. I couldn't go to work when it was shut...
 
Floogie said:
I fail to perceive it as punishing children. Either way, I hope you are consistent and held that view in regard to the royal wedding earlier this year...
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Did you really just compare a national holiday to a strkie involving a few tens of thousands but inconviniencing a few million at least?!:confused:
 
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