For all those who support the strikes

[chopc]

Where do you think the money will come from for all the pay rises? Are you personally willing to pay more tax?
We all saw during the pandemic it is the poorly paid essential workers that kept the country going and they totally deserve more money than the claps they got. However will YOU be prepared to contribute to the pot ?

If not where do you think the govn will find more money from?

@taybert I calculated once that if I worked 3 days I earned 4 fifths of what I’d earn working 5 days. I went part time to 3 days, had two days at home with my children and saved two days childcare so I was better off too. It didn’t affect me career wise either, so why wouldn’t I have more money and work less?

@taybert You could make that case for far lower tax rates.

I ve been lucky enough to pay tax at 40% if it went to 45% i would still take home 55% more (over and above my 20% taxable pay) than i would by not working the extra to put me in that higher tax bracket.

No one is working more to earn less, we don't have 100% plus tax rates.

the Doctors pensions stuff isn't a HMRC issue.... its a Govt cock up or even deliberate, as they could fix easily.

Other European countries function better than we do with higher tax rates.. your argument doesn't stack up.

Good post. Especially the last part.

The government can afford anything it actually wants to afford. It doesn't want to pay public sector workers more, that's it. Millions can be spent on furlough, PPE, to bail out bankers, on arms deals.

Your logic is a little fuzzy - I’ll let you re-read your own post to figure out why - but I’ll happily answer your first question:

How is it a change of subject to say the goc wastes money?

(Context: people saying that they would happily pay more tax never say how much more, instead changing the subject to rant about money they think that the government has wasted.)

It’s a change of subject because it means that you are avoiding the difficult and uncomfortable question of how much more tax you, personally, in pounds sterling, are prepared to pay each year to fund public sector pay rises.

So far we’ve had one person say that she’d pay another £3k per month. Provided her childcare, which she says costs £3k a month, became free, of course. And train tickets. And other things too. So that’s not going to help much, is it?

We’ve also had some vague pontificating on ‘taxing all the billionaires and millionaires 1%’. Which apparently will raise billions. Taxing them on what? There are different types of taxation: income taxes, transaction taxes (like VAT and stamp duty), taxes on the estates of dead people, like IHT, and taxes on crystallised gains, like CGT.

Which of those would you apply to these billionaires and millionaires? If they haven’t earned any U.K. income that year, or died, or crystallised a chargeable gain? Or would you invent a new wealth tax especially for them? Have you ever thought about the complexity of bringing in a wealth tax? plenty of other countries have, and have abandoned the idea. I can imagine the howls when somebody living in a semi in London ‘worth’ more than £1m is told to find 1%, or £10k, stat. Do you think that those people, and the billionaires, will happily hand over the cash? Or might the latter relocate to another country, thus spending their money somewhere other than London’s finest hotels, restaurants, car dealerships and retailers?

Well yes but the problem is now that money has all been spent and huge debts wracked up from furlough, covid lockdowns, bail outs. The country is not in a good position and we can’t keep adding hugely to the debt. We all knew when trillions was spent on lockdowns that we would have to pay for it sometime, well now here we are.

I agree it's not just about taxation but needs to work with effective, efficient governance to distribute monies. Governance process change will take a long time to change. The taxation is a sticking plaster to get people fair wages.

I look at countries like Switzerland, that are non-EU and tax EVERYTHING - even down to whether you practice religion. Their public services are just amazing and things just work. I remember waiting for a bus in Zurich that was due at 5.07pm and guess when it arrived. Another time a bus was 1 minute late and the bus driver said I didn't need to pay

Let's focus on getting the wealthy to pay more tax. Let's stop allowing bankers to stop profiteering from the fuck ups of the government. Let's get rid of paying for the royal family. Let's get the royal family paying taxes too. That's just a start.

There's always something to blame for the underfunding of the public sector. Banking crash led to years of austerity and pay freezes - the effects of which seemed to be felt for longer by the public sector than by the bankers themselves.
Then covid - a drain on the economy but also a money making opportunity for the government.
What will be the next excuse?

We didn't spend Trillions on Lockdowns... it was between 310 and 420 billion, about 20% of GDP.

QE is printing money to buy assets... BOE now selling them off, its also money in the economy for investment, loans to business and satisfying markets.. which is somewhat important.

….once tax becomes punitive people just don’t work as much. This is exactly what’s happening with experienced doctors- the tax charges on pension growth and loss of personal allowance means means that at a certain point by working more they earn less.

We often hear variations on this statement in relation to NHS consultants, which is why it is important to put it into context.

The ‘tax charges on pension’ affect everybody with a pension pot valued at just over £1m. You heard that correctly. £1m. That was a policy brought in by the coalition government, to reduce the amount of pension tax relief being claimed by the wealthiest. Charges now apply if you contribute more than £40k in any year, or if the overall value of the fund exceeds around £1.1m. Which was the right thing to do: the wealthiest really were claiming the lion’s share of tax relief on pensions. For defined benefit pensions, like the NHS pension, a multiplier of 20x is applied to the expected annual pension income on retirement.

NHS consultants and GPs and other highly paid NHS professionals in this position have a publicly-funded, from general taxation, pension fund of more than £1m. In other words, around £50k a year on retirement. Am I crying for the plight of those people? No. They could leave the NHS pension scheme, of course, and work more, but choose not to.

I’m affected by pension savings limits too (I’m not a clinician) but I’m not refusing to work, or cutting my hours down in a fit of pique.

There does seem to be a crossover in those who demanded more lockdowns and more now. If you thought it would end in constraints later on then it was expected to an extent

Aside from war not expected so extra impact, but yeh here we are paying.

The war in Ukraine is the main driver for what we see now with inflation and energy prices.

We only really had LD's for a relatively short time? 4 months in March 2020, after that, even later on in the year, so much opened up and certainly in my experience, they were ignored, once we started seeing vaccines in Decmeber 2020, people were spending again.
Hospitality and travel hit the worst but its the nergy prices that are screwing that sector now.

I don't understand the "we are paying" argument, it was added to the national debt, 30 to 60 years of repayments, what are we paying?

The NHS was in a sorrowful state in 2019 already and Brexit imho has had a greater imapct on the UK and staff/labour shortages.

@PrincessConstance - so your husband got an apology. That sounds fair.

Nurses are not some sort catch all customer service. They are definitely treated like that by people who assume that they work on demand to requests. That might have been a fair assumption 40 years ago. But now it's about allocation and priorities which don't involve the constant "excuse me but I've just got a question". That is the polite end.

Most NHS staff are exceedingly diplomatic with people in pain, people who have to wait, people who find it difficult to understand that they really aren't top of the list. It's a free service at the point of access.

Professionally though, nurses and frontline staff experience high rates of assault, including sexual assault, intimidation and criminal behaviour by a sector of the general public. Again, this is because they are frontline and deal with people who may be distressed or simply utter arseholes. That, with a high workload, can affect anyone.

A recent visit to an A&E proved to be full of signs explaining that there is a system of prioritisation, nurses handling with some tact the general public and still someone shouting at the reception staff. There have to be signs that tell people that they cannot take their whole family into examination rooms and security staff. That is the background to their work. It is something that has meant the law had to be changed to address physical risks they face at work.

I doubt your workplace is like that.

I watched a hospital consultant deal with two ladies, one who was there really I think for the grand day out. He was unbelievably tactful in addressing the medical concern which was his job for the patient and cutting her out. This other woman was a total pain in the arse, she'd already been through one consultant with her concerns for her friend which were ridiculous. This chap had a terrific way of dealing with her. In the nicest way, he shut her down and got her and the actual patient out.

This need to handle people is constant in the NHS. And that was not even a person who came for treatment. I sat for 15 minutes extra waiting for my consultation as he dealt with them.

Many staff are doing that all day.

No, I just deal with £600 million worth of sales and tough negotiations with other companies. Our customer service teams have a motto customer is always right. It has to be this way. It doesn't matter what mood I'm in I always have a business demeanor. I have to, otherwise, the company would lose vital agreements with our suppliers. Ultimately persistent failure to do the job correctly in a professional manner would lead to dismissal.

Dp runs a commercial and domestic utility maintenance company, so has to deal with complex issues daily and customers who are slow to pay invoices. As a person, he's spent 35 plus yrs in construction-hospitality-organizing events-dealing with security for events and then the general public.

Consultants as a rule have always been great, very polite, professional, informative, and commanding. The nursing staff I'm afraid are very below par in this respect, some are surly rude and downright incompetent. It's not good enough and would NOT be tolerated by any other service provider. Which ultimately is what you are doing.

Already worth 25% less than it was 15 years ago thanks.

So no. Not willing to sacrifice any more, particularly given the NHS pension scheme runs at a yearly surplus that the government skims back into the treasury.

@PrincessConstance - but you are paid quite well presumably for all that, you are not subject to assault, being screamed at, you are not assumed to be the point of all contact as nurses often are. My experience is that many of them are very tactful with the demands of the public.

Your post, which is about your status really, implies everything which is wrong in a way. Your comparison is of a commercial service compared to one which has to deal with people who are ill. It is not a business.

I have used private medicine. I can certainly say that the service was good in the sense that there was not the same level of demand, the curtains and decor was excellent. That was a commercial enterprise.

Nursing in the NHS is not customer service. Its core is provide care. Collaring nurses and basically treating them like reception staff disrespects what they do. Yet it happens often. Much of it based on the idea that what they do is not important. But I think we will find over the next few weeks it is very important.

I don't think "What do you want" is an appropriate introduction when dealing with a patient/customer. The nurses didn't look stressed, scooting around their office on their chairs sniggering on a Sat afternoon. It's just Ill-disciplined.
I cannot believe you are excusing being rude. This is why staff bully one another because there is no incentive or repercussions for behaving in that manner.

In a private business, this behavior would result in being sacked. The NHS is a service provider.
Grow up.

Well we will have to disagree. Did you complain about this individual?

I have worked in both sectors, frankly, I think it is on the individual rather than the institution, and I do not agree that nursing is customer service in a hospital. I can fully understand that you may feel this comparable to what you do, but I think for many reasons it is not. Even if you were right, one individual is not a reason to say that nurses as a class are rude.

Consultants as a rule have always been great, very polite, professional, informative, and commanding. The nursing staff I'm afraid are very below par in this respect, some are surly rude and downright incompetent. It's not good enough and would NOT be tolerated by any other service provider. Which ultimately is what you are doing

TBH thats probably because you look down on them.... see them as 2nd class and they react accordingly... as proved by your response to the pp "Grow up"

Did you learn that on a Customer Care Course lol

My DD meets some people who think they are the only pebble on the beach.. one verbally then physically attacked her because she was late for a meeting with her.... DD had been dealing with a patient who had a stroke on the ward.

I ve used the NHS over many years and not once have i ever come across a rude or surly nurse...a few very tired and worn out ones.
i am pleasant and friendly and they are in return, customer service works both ways.. you should know this.. its basic.

@PrincessConstance the above posts are quite the self own. Do you think it is more likely that every single consultant is lovely and every single nurse is horrible, or could it maybe be that your behaviour towards consultants and nurses are prompting different reactions? Some of the language you've used gives away an uncomfortably misogynistic view of nursing e.g. "ill-disciplined" which is not a term you use about adults and peers. My guess is you don't speak in that way about male-dominated professions.

^this.. 100%.. You worded it a lot better than me.

I wouldn’t mind paying more tax so those on the minimum wage or earning under £25k could get a decent cost of living pay rise. But I would object to an across the board pay rise for say rail workers where some already earn near £50k. A 19% rise for someone on £25k is £4750 a year. The same for someone on £50k is £9500 a year. That just wouldn’t sit right with me. And some nurses are on £35k. That is not the poverty line and perhaps they need to look at how they spend their money as they obviously need help with budgeting …..

Our customer service teams have a motto customer is always right. In matters of taste.

@PrincessConstance pretty much anyone who deals with the general public will agree that the first sentence is bollocks unless qualified by the second.

Yes.

Or they could do something with the PPE it's costing us 100's K to pay China to store. You know the PPE their donors for contracts for and could t actually make to standard. Or even tax the donors from the millions they made from the contracts us tax payers are now finding the storage of.

Johnson could defend himself in the inquiry. Why are we paying for his lawyers? He made the choice not to follow the laws he set.

They could tax non doms.

They could have been much more careful with tax payers money in the first place so we aren't paying for money they borrowed and didn't insure.

The issue isn't the current CoL crisis. The problem is over a decade of not funding public services and now seeing the result of this.