To say suck it up like the rest of us???

[ticktickticktickBOOM]

I come from a socialist family, we had striking miner's kids living with us for respite during the strikes. However, the railway unions are taking the pee aren't they? Transport workers aren't the only people taking a hit right now. What about the 100's of thousands of hospitality, leisure, carer and charity workers in bars, cafe's, restaurants, theme parks, swimming pools, hotels, campsites, working in supporting all our children and elderly relatives etc that are getting between tiny and zero wage increases yet have no option but to carry on and make ends meet. Why can't railway workers see the problems they are going to cause and why can't they see that they are IN THE SAME BOAT AS EVERYONE ELSE (except the wealthy obvs).

YABU - striking railway workers are more deserving of pay increases than the rest of us

YANBU - we need to pull together and see every member of society through this and not cause each other harm

This is only the beginning. When the basic needs of human survival is shelter warmth and food and someone out working full time isn’t earning enough to cover these due to the greed in this country. What do you expect. And There’s worse to come. Unless they cap housing rent costs/food/energy costs, it’s going to get worse.

Kidsaretryingtodestroyme
If you want to sit quietly and martyr yourself good luck. Other people won’t sit quietly and you should be thankful because the noisy lot help everyone get better pay and conditions.

One of the "noisy lot" (Eddie Dempsey) could make an immediate difference to the conditions of one family on Islington Council's social housing waiting list (14,000 households in need of accommodation), by moving out of his tax-payer funded council accommodation. Pretty sure he can afford his own accommodation with his in excess of £70,000.00 salary!

Your later comment on Rishi's wife moving her money on shore did make me smile, though 😀 Indeed.

wombat - God almighty. No, you don't need to keep posting your extremely limited, partial view. Anyone who knows about the failed test and trace, and the billions spent on dodgy PPE etc etc has a fairly shrewd idea of why we pay high taxes and don't get good public services.

committees.parliament.uk/committee/127/public-accounts-committee/news/161243/government-has-risked-lost-unacceptable-billions-of-taxpayers-money-in-its-covid-response-and-must-account-to-the-generations-that-will-pay-for-it/

@Iamthewombat - I don't think the answer is that obvious to be fair! I think the way the NHS etc. are run seems quite wasteful so maybe that's why we're not getting good value for our taxes? Also, the blatant lack of accountability when the government screw up and waste vast amounts of public money is worrying - for example the huge amount of PPE that was of such poor quality it had to be scrapped.

I also don't agree that the rail companies aren't making much of a profit. I've attached an article that's a bit out of date and with a obvious left-leaning bias but it seems fairly clear that there is a large amount of profit being taken from the railways rather than being spent on its upkeep and workforce. I personally would be all for it being returned to public ownership for this reason.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/board-gravy-train-rail-firms-9553889

I'm also not sure why you're so dismissive of MP payrises. Even though they might not have a big impact on the financial picture overall, the message it sends is of rank hypocrisy, particularly when the little people are being told to 'suck it up'. You seem convinced that the only way to fund public sector payrises is by reducing the level of public services. Instead, maybe we should be looking at renationalising the railways and energy supply so that the end users and workers for these companies can once again get a fairer deal.

Don’t be silly. Our public services were underfunded long before the pandemic. Are you seriously suggesting that pre pandemic we enjoyed Dutch-style public services on much lower income taxes?

I’ve worked in the NHS. Whilst there are inefficiencies they aren’t anywhere near absorbing the many billions of pounds of tax revenue that would be needed to pay for eg free childcare and free university courses and subsidised publicly owned railways. Any savings would rightly be directed to frontline care in any event.

Re the train operating companies: I don’t think that anyone has said that they make no profits. I asked a PP to define what an ‘obscene profit’ was, and suggested that she state what profit margin would count as ‘obscene’. No reply, naturally. The examples given didn’t support her statement.

The thing about private businesses is, they are there to make a profit so nobody should be surprised if they do. Deutsche Bahn aren’t going to invest their capital in running the Northern Rail franchise for no money. They’d take their capital elsewhere. That’s not a cause for celebration when you’ve got privatised rail services. Re nationalisation would cost billions.

Re the MPs, as a PP noted, you can’t point at one small group of people (billionaires, MPs) and use them as an excuse to go on strike because they aren’t feeling hardship and it’s not fair. The people striking aren’t even the poorest. Public sector pay rises are really expensive, so something has to give: increased taxes or reduced services.

No, wombat, I'm giving you an example. I didn't think that it would need spelling out quite as much as it seems to - here are more examples. There are lots:
labour.org.uk/press/labours-dossier-of-waste-reveals-ministers-wasted-13-billion-of-taxpayers-money/

Handing over £500 million to shareholders, while denying a decent payrise is pretty obscene, I think:

www.opendemocracy.net/en/firstgroup-abellio-rail-strikes-rmt-shareholders-payout/

Hear hear! Do you @djdkdkddkek think all the increases in fares have gone to the workers. No, they've gone to the shareholders and big bosses.

This is a good lesson in critically assessing your sources.

We are shown an article alleging that the current government has wasted £13 billion on MoD contacts since 2010. Well, they might have. I read Private Eye, where this sort of thing is featured regularly. But, would I unquestioningly believe a number presented to me by the opposition? No. How are they defining ‘waste’?

The second source reports that First Group paid a dividend of £500m to its shareholders in December 2021 and associates that negatively with the employees’ pay settlement. However, First Group sold a load of non-U.K. transport businesses in 2021 (you can read about it in a link somebody posted upthread, which the poster claimed proved that First Group were making ‘obscene profits’ from running a UK rail franchise: it did not). Should publicly traded companies be forced to use the proceeds of selling some of their activities to increase the salaries of employees working in unassociated businesses? Anyone who understands finance will tell you that making an expensive long term commitment based on a one-off profit from selling something is unwise.

In any event, the debate isn’t about whether private businesses make profits - of course that’s what they aim to do, or they wouldn’t bother - or whether governments waste money - of course they do, for all sorts of reasons. It’s about whether the profits made by the U.K. TOCs really are ‘obscene’, which you can only assess in relation to the turnover and costs, and whether our government is significantly more wasteful than e.g. the Dutch or German or Danish governments. Nobody has established either of those things. Meaning that you can’t claim that we’re in a worse position than other Northern European nations because our government is somehow more wasteful than theirs, and that you similarly can’t claim that we pay as much tax as those countries do and get less in return because of problems unique to Britain.

Face it: if you want everyone to get big pay rises immediately, which as previously discussed will drive inflation up further and would be foolish, taxes are going to have to go up. Yours, not just Amazon’s or MPs’ or billionaires’.

Just seen an interesting link on another thread that argues against the theory that payrises drive inflation up further. So maybe cutting back on the arguably 'obscene' profits is the way forward rather than raising taxes?

twitter.com/richardjmurphy/status/1552920687639142400?s=21&t=zJY2ZvL3QP4WhSsAmMDOvA

It doesn’t matter what people post wombat: you are absolutely determined not to deviate from your entrenched view. Private Eye is a reputable source where journalists practice due diligence. If the information was false they would be forced to retract it and apologise. As others have noted it’s not as if you are substantiating your claims at all, though you are very keen to insist that others should. It hardly matters though - people can read the thread and make judgements about the robustness of arguments themselves, which is clearly happening.

And a lot of people are happy to pay more tax, if they see public money being wisely and fairly spent. I would and I am not alone.

I think 25% of all profits made by companies should be allocated equally amongst the employees. That way everybody benefits from ensuring the company does well. I'm sure some will argue that it would be unfair as people put money into those companies, but, without those workers, there would be no company and no profits to be had. That's what a lot of people don't seem to understand....without those at the bottom, those at the top will have nothing.

I like this idea @TimBoothseyes

So do I. It's an excellent idea.

You are funny. Anyone disagreeing with you is ‘entrenched’. I don’t need to provide evidence because I haven’t made any ‘unsubstantiated claims’. Nor did I suggest that Private Eye is publishing untrue statements. I said that I read Private Eye. I said that it would be foolish to unquestioningly believe reports of amounts wasted by the current government, from the opposition.

You have made some claims you can’t substantiate. Like “we pay a lot of tax in the U.K.”. You don’t like it much when you are challenged and asked to provide evidence, as we can see from your posts.

And the public sector, who don’t work for profit-making companies? Perhaps they will go on strike for pay rises to match this private sector bonanza. To be paid for by increased taxes. Which companies will be paying less of, having given away 25% of their taxable profits. Or maybe staff will just leave the public sector. Not a great outcome either way, is it?

You have been shown repeatedly that the combination of NI and income tax results in a high tax burden.
We can’t reasonably go down the rabbithole of anslysing individual words in reputable publications, whose claims have not been contested by Ofcom, when it’s only a mumsnet thread at stake. Or maybe you can. I don’t have time or inclination.
I don’t find anyone disagreeing with me entrenched. I do think that you seem to be though.
but it’s good we can amuse each other and everyone else can draw their own conclusions.

No, you and others have repeatedly claimed that we have ‘a high tax burden’ in the U.K. I showed, with evidence, that we don’t, with comparisons to Dutch and danish income tax. Which a PP, similarly attached to the ‘we pay too much tax’ narrative, amusingly claimed that she couldn’t possibly be expected to consider because she didn’t do ‘nitty gritty details’ , preferring an ‘overall general picture’. An incorrect ‘overall general picture’, but why let the facts get in the way of a good old emotional outburst?

Actually you made your partial case for the Dutch, but ignored elements like morefavourable child benefit there. Others showed Denmark’s rate was comparable to our combined NI and income tax - slightly higher, but not much considering their vastly better public services. But we’re going round in circles now, so let’s just smile wrily at each other and have a good evening.

Lots of the public fail to see the bigger picture. The rail unions aren’t just striking over pay, it’s about cutting maintenance schedules and staff redundancies. Even if the railways don’t make it compulsory, jobs will go even with natural wastage. This means unmanned ticket stations and trains.
Surely this is about safety? Vulnerable women travelling on unmanned trains and limited staff at stations? What about the cuts to maintenance?
Rail shareholders have been sucking the teet from the British taxpayers for 30 years. Tax payers who don’t even use trains still line the pockets of the people running the train companies. Whilst taking huge saleries. Meanwhile those that use trains pay the highest fares in Europe.
Also what’s with this attitude about nurses not getting a pay rise, or hospitality? The RMT isn’t the union for nurses or restaurant workers so how can they negotiate their wages for them?
In any case, the RMT has said everyone deserves a better deal.
The rich are getting richer and everyone else if getting poorer.
Yet sadly many people have been blinded by the very people who are making them poorer.
Its scary how people have been conditioned to hate the people who are trying to help the bigger picture.
But when Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak becomes PM- they both want to ban industrial action anyway ( for everyone- this included teachers , nurses and factory workers).

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

—Martin Niemöller

Hear hear. I am always astonished at the attitude on here when people post about very bad working conditions. The majority are usually on the side of the crap employer with shite reason like , well they need to make a profit. If an employer can't make a profit without exploiting their employees they should not be in business . End of