ATBU? Tories and DUP in favour of freezing public sector pay

[AtHomeDadGlos]

So, the Tories along with their cash rich friends the DUP have just voted down Labour's amendment (supported by every other MP) to end the public sector pay freeze.

So they can find £1bn to keep themselves in power but can't find anything to pay our firefighters, nurses, police force or teachers more?

TABU aren't they?

More and more reliant on agency workers, and this lovely government of ours is currently working to privatise the NHS internal staffing agency.

www.thecanary.co/2017/06/27/jeremy-hunt-quietly-selling-off-crucial-part-nhs-thats-saving-us-millions/

Frankly i think they want a safe staffing crisis to 'prove' the NHS is not working and justify selling bits of it off left right and centre. It's an obvious plan

Steph - not him but another Tory. I will post his response on here though when I get it.

He always votes with the Party line; clearly he hopes to move up the ranks as he's a relatively new MP. He's also a landlord and voted against Labour's amendment to ensure housing is fit for human habitation; by all accounts he's a lovely chap

Lismore - in relation to pay scales you may be interested to know that they were removed from civil servants. So we can't even progress up what was once our pay scale either. Adds insult to injury what with everything else has been done to our take home pay. E.g. Increased pension contributions and less pension. In addition both voluntary and compulsory redundancy pay packages have been heavily reduced so not as attractive to leave and try our luck elsewhere.

I doubt any of the usual tory defending posters will turn up on this thread although they should, Id love to hear how the fuck theyd defend it

I don't understand how the government can't see that the continued cap on pay is costing the country money.

Oh, they know, but remember, it's your money (and there's always an endless supply of that).

Anyway, benefit caps, pay caps. are all ideological, not fiscal. They are intended to reinforce the Tory message, which is "if you're poor, it's because you are meant to be poor."

Love all the comments from private sector people saying that they haven't had a pay rise either. Boo fucking hoo!

I don't remember any private sector employees being compelled to run into burning buildings as part of their job. When you do....come back to me and tell me how hard done by you are as well.

Whether this was a cynical move or not by Labour it's the cheering of Tory MPs which has sickened me. Hateful fucking bastards all of them.

Yep. Cheering because they beat Labour. This is real people you are screwing over. Cheer in their faces would you? Because that's what you're actually doing.

This has made me extremely pissed off. What next is to come? This worries me a great deal

I don't remember any private sector employees being compelled to run into burning buildings as part of their job.

Only a very, very small proportion of public sector workers are compelled to do that though, so to use that as a "boo fucking hoo" about the private sector workers is rather disingenuous.

This vote though wasn't anything to do with public sector pay - if Labour had won the vote to change an item in the Queen's speech, it would have made an already shaky government vulnerable.

JC put this forward as it was a win win for him - he wins and makes government unstable, he loses and makes the Tories look like they favour this when they don't.

JC put this forward as it was a win win for him - he wins and makes government unstable, he loses and makes the Tories look like they favour this when they don't.

See, I don't quite get this. Let's imagine - just as a thought experiment - that I liked to kick kittens.

So in this analogy my deriving pleasure from kicking kittens equates to Tories deriving pleasure from cutting public service and causing people to suffer.

Now it is a little weak because I would probably feel at least a modicum of shame and attempt to do my kitten kicking out of sight, while Tories seem almost proud of their worker and poor people kicking, but it will have to do.

But if someone were to call me out on kitten kicking, and ask me just to curtail it a little....just a little, and I said "Hell no, I am going to continue kicking kittens....maybe I will think about cutting back later....perhaps...well not really," then how would it be win/win for the person upset about kitten kicking?

I don't see it.

A high proportion ARE frontline staff and are compelled to deal with

Violence
Murder
Sex crimes
Weapons
Child abuse
Medical emergencies
Death
Delivering babies
Fire
Car accidents
Abuse toward them
High risk of physical injury
Unpaid work
Emotional trauma

This is far and above a lot of what anyone in the private sector would be compelled to do seen as we are now a retail and IT industry led country and no longer have people down the mines

makeourfuture - the problem is if the Tories were defeated on this item - an amendment to the queens speech - it would basically mean another general election.

So effectively no government until September which is the first realistic date for an election and bugger brexit as everyone is campaigning to win the election.

So, to follow through your logic.... if it had been a motion by Labour "The queens speech should be amended to ban the kicking of kittens" The Tories HAVE to vote against this - to avoid another election.

In fact you could say JC has in fact caused the public sector workers to be on a pay freeze for longer as the Tories would have dropped this one fairly early in the Parliament, now they have been forced by JC to defend it because he has conflated it with supporting the Queen's Speech....

It's a PR triumph for Corbyn, he's the 100% winner on this one

It's a 50% triumph for the Tories (Queen's Speech upheld), but forced to like "Kicking Kittens"

The losers are the public sector workers....because of JC using this the Tories now cannot drop it soon as they had planned and it will be in place longer than it should be

Having been seriously ill during the past year I'm disgusted at this government taking for granted folk who save lives.
I cannot thank paramedics icu doctors and nurses enough for saving me and think these dedicated people are worth their weight in gold.
Don't take people for granted Theresa they don't have to work for you!

In fact you could say JC has in fact caused the public sector workers to be on a pay freeze for longer as the Tories would have dropped this one fairly early in the Parliament, now they have been forced by JC to defend it because he has conflated it with supporting the Queen's Speech

But there is another option. Again we will conflate Tories with kicking kittens....it's not a stretch....

One could, if put in the position of having to vote, say, "I find kitten kicking morally deplorable and I will not support it."

Is that option something that just is not possible with Tories and the DUP?

Again, couldn't the Tories have said, "Good idea! We were thinking of giving up on this austerity....it hasn't worked....we support the amendment."

Or are they pretty much strapped to the mast now?

Of course the Tories could have put something about outlawing kitten kicking in the QS whereupon they could have accused Labour of voting against their bid to outlaw kitten kicking for the rest of this Parliament.

Yes they could have abstained. And the Labour motion would have passed.

Of corse it's a win win for Corbyn, but then he's on the right side in this one.

And there's no reason why an amendment can't be passed and the Govt stay in power. 'Losing' one amendment doesn't mean the Govt would fall. See what happens tonight when the excellent Stella Creasy MP has her amendment voted on allowing Northern Irish women the right to travel to England for an abortion. The DUP will oppose, the Tories may well also oppose but there should be enough Tories who rebel and vote it through.

This will prove that the Tories are able to vote with their conscience but that they don't see anything wrong with retaining the pay cap for public sector workers.

Oh, and to those posters who believe the Tories would've got straight on to removing the pay cap if wasn't for big old scary nasty JC, really? Come off it...

Isn't the whole thing just political manoeuvring?

First vote in parliament with the new coalition, there's no way even the most kind hearted Tory could vote for it, they'd be lynched buy the rest of the party for fucking up the deal on day one.

Jeremy picked it because he couldn't resist, personally I think he could have gone for something a bit cleverer. 'Tories refuse extra cash for public sector' isn't exactly news and it won't have pissed off anyone that was going to vote for the Tories otherwise.

Interestingly the right wing press is drip feeding rumours about a government consultation on public pay - e.g. Let's run it up the flag pole and see who salutes. If they get a lot of positive feed back it'll be number one in the manifesto. Why do it now when there are no votes in it?

In one / three / six months time when we are facing the polls again they can unveil it as a keystone policy that they've fully investigated and costed for, rather than Jeremy who started offering it without due care and consideration.

The financially cautious swing voter will go for it. 'Safe' anti austerity, none of that scary 'up the workers' stuff that still puts plenty of small 'c' conservatives right off JC.

It's Blairite really. Don't you think?

I do believe that Corbyn has made it harder for Tory MPs to challenge the pay cap. Labour were trying to force the loss of a Queen's speech vote on the Government. They knew full well that the Tory party would line up behind the Government because they didn't want another election so Labour would lose the vote. Both sides are playing politics with this issue and the only the public sector workers who will suffer.