“Everybody thought the EU was about people coming into the country … no-one told of us the benefits”.

[MrsMurphyIWish]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2136jnjx1o

And the response to this very now deprived community is to vote Reform.

“Brexit has removed a key source of funding, which the area desperately needs. County Durham received £154m of EU funding between 2014 and 2020, about £22m a year. Since the UK left the European Union, it receives about half that amount, £12m annually, under the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.”

The story is sad (and typical of deprived areas - I know, I live in one). Towns feeling forgotten and never recovering from closed industry but why can they not see history will repeat itself?

No. No one is working for the good of the country except for the despised and impoverished public sector workers.The rest are all working to create wealth for the supremely rich.

Its been a long time since people ever saw the result of their labour.

You sound like a communist, weirdly. Collective farms did not go well.

It is obvious you have no idea about modern poverty levels or what it is to live poor nowadays, barely making enough to pay the rent, scraping down the back of the sofa to find a few coins for a bit of heating or an extra loaf or tin of beans.

English is the most commonly taught language elsewhere in the world and the most easily accessible. It’s virtually the worlds second language and many country’s use it as a lingua Franca. This is the local problem, that our companies and government can recruit from across the world, gaining skills for which they have not paid in education and training. That’s why they won’t pay for education and training here.

That also accounts for the apparent benefits to “the economy” whatever that term means. That machine does not have to benefit ordinary people, in fact there’s no benefit in some rich people’s heads to allowing workers enough to live on. And now they don’t even need to pay for new workers, birth or education or death, but import new mugs from all over the world.

‘Lucrative’ night shifts in a hospital. Oh my dear lord.

I work in a hospital and have just come off nights. They’re only ‘lucrative’ by comparison. They do not pay the cost of all the work I would have to do for free - I would be paying actually - on the wards to move up a band. In case you haven’t noticed - you clearly haven’t - nursing recruitment on uni courses has dropped off a cliff because it is not worth doing unless you’re a foreigner who’s done it abroad for free, or comparatively little o ce translated to British living costs.

Can barely type for laughing. You’re right slavery is a bad comparison. Roman house slaves - house slaves, not mining obv- expected to be housed, fed and decently dressed and at certain times had a good chance of e of being freed and set up in business with perpetual patronage.

@WaryCrow

No. No one is working for the good of the country except for the despised and impoverished public sector workers.The rest are all working to create wealth for the supremely rich.

Teeny weeny bit biased there?

Everyone outside the public sector who pays tax in their pay or spends on Vat rated goods is paying for the upkeep of this country. Those "despised and impoverished" public sector workers most of whom are neither, can only be paid because other people pay taxes.

Most employees are employees of companies owned by shareholders, most of whom will not be rich, or held pension funds holding people's future pensions in their hands, or they are employees of SMEs owned by hard working middle class people.

A very small percentage of people work directly to benefit the super rich, many of whom are super rich by shoveling money around the world, not by employing grunt level workers.

You don’t work for the public sector either then.

And clearly you think ‘bias’ is only for those who don’t agree with you.

Thix is not a time when those born without inherited wealth and family support can work up to the same level of wealth that the boomers - my parents generation, not some unknown mythical time - enjoyed. My own parents worked far less than myself and gained far more. This is fact, current and historical fact. Generational inequality and the increased levels of inequality now are well documented and fact. I’m wasting my time arguing with those who consider facts to be biased because they themselves were born into wealth they don’t recognise, however entertaining your ignorance occasionally is.

I have done. Leisure services then the Fire service.

I value everyone who works hard in the public services but I also know who pays their wages.

Oh puhleeeze.

Don't make statements like No one is working for the good of the country except for the despised and impoverished public sector workers if you don't want well argued responses.

The post of yours I've quoted is making a different point altogether. I don't have time now, off on bus to watch a football match in Division 7, but I'll happily debate the huge problems with inherited wealth with you later.

Public service workers provide the education and health services to enable the private sector to even begin to operate.

In your case, the private sector don't provide an emergency fire service when their factory catches fire... & they don't provide AE for when their CEO has a heart attack.

So one can make the valid argument that its public sector workers that prop up the private sector....

But of course the reality is we need both, there is no hierarchy.

Public service workers provide the education and health services to enable the private sector to even begin to operate.

I'm sorry but that isn't correct. The private sector existed long before there were any public services. The NHS is not yet 80 years old.

Public services wouldn't be there if the taxes paid by the private sector didn't pay for them. Profit and tax, which in this country are close to 100% created by the private sector, have to exist before public services can exist.

This is no chicken and egg situation, the money to pay nurses and buy hospitals has to exist first.

The public sector is of course immensely important to modern life. Recognising how it is paid for is not a criticism and does not mean that its services are not valued.

Modern business need an educated workforce, with access to healthcare & i'm talking about modern business not the 1820s

If we shut down the NHS and stopped Universal Education, the economy would completely collapse.

As i said, we need both.

Over half the economy is made up of SMEs though.

What, like London? Yes!

The same London that raises enough tax revenue to be a net contributor to services in the rest of the country (along with contributions from the SE and the East of England)?

Maybe if other areas saw a fraction of the investment and job creation they would not be reliant on London. It's self-perpetuating.

Nobody is saying that we don't need public services.

But you can't have them if you don't have any money to pay for them.

The public sector would not work for free.

I don't agree with you that if public funding of the NHS or education was stopped that the economy would collapse. What would happen is that businesses making profits would pay for the health care and education of the people that they need, and the poor and less trainable and those ill but replaceable would be left to live unhealthy lives and die too young.

We have public services largely to provide more equitably for the whole population and particularly for those at the bottom, not because it keeps business going.

There was a modern economy running fine in 1947 before the NHS, when poor people who were ill stayed ill or died.

Nobody is saying that the public sector is not immensely valuable but in order to keep it running we need governments that understand that borrowing to increase public sector spending which increases GDP is not "growth" and which are not idealogically opposed to the word profit.

I don't disagree but it's unrealistic to expect voters or even local councils in London to solve that problem given the cost of living here, and the councils don't keep what they raise as it goes in part to subsidise the north and west!

Only proper regional policy can solve this.

It isn't true that London Councils don't keep what they raise. What happened was that the amount of money they were given from central funds was reduced and it was diverted to much poorer councils who needed it a lot more.

All councils keep all their own council tax.

Are you suggesting that rich areas in London should receive state funding instead of vastly poorer ones elsewhere?

Are you suggesting a regional system that leaves the wealth created in a region to be spent in that region? If so, do you have even half a clue what the result of that would be?

Why would (some) business fund this when they can up sticks and go elsewhere?
So Car manufacturing, Pharma, Defence, Finance, energy sectors.... all would leave.
We'd be left with a 3rd world economy.

The rest would fold, business just wouldn't have the means to build/fund schools, hospitals and the staff able to run them.

Public services also use vast amounts of private sector materials and equipment, all those sales gone and a workforce that spends money mostly in private sector.

TBF i'm not really sure what you re arguing for or against? i've already said both are needed.

I was continuing the discussion because you haven't acknowledged who pays for public services.

Of course we were discussing a fantasy situation where public services simply stopped. And of course that would create chaos but it was never a realistic scenario.

What I described is what would have happened if public services had never existed.

I'd have thought that me saying repeatedly "that we need both" makes it very obvious surely?
Public sector provides the educated and healthy workforce for PS to thrive, Private sector helps pay for it....

Their service users pay their wages. Which isn't always the tax payer.

Many public sector organisations provide commercial services to businesses that are paid for directly. Or to the public eg DVLA, Passport Office. Or regulators such as the Environment Agency, who charge fees to the businesses they regulate.

The public sector provide a very, very small percentage of the money that finances public services as a whole, and only very specific parts of it like the Land Registry make a profit that contributes to other departments running costs.

You are correct that some other parts charge for their services and are part or fully self funding but again this is only a tiny part of total public spending.

The NHS has 1½ million employees who are almost entirely paid by taxpayers.

I would agree with you if you had written "the private sector helps by paying for it".

No, no, yes.

It’s difficult to compare services in the past because they were very different worlds, not least much much lower populations. But there’s nearly always been some kind of provision for the poorest and the old. Not centrally organised, true. China worked off almost entirely public sector until very recently, as other societies in the past may have. Alternative organisations are perfectly possible - Britain’s public / private compromises were very different in the past and we were mostly better off for it.

Today‘s public services pay with the value of their work. No one would trust a private Fire Service in today’s world, you’d be into Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Already the NHS is an unvalued and unpaid back up to private healthcare, and we have the example of Royal Mail forced to provide infrastructure for private delivery companies in front of us still. The trouble is that the value of work is no longer recognised, and ideology continues to force tech and private wealth for the few down our throats. It’s resulting in exactly the squalor, social problems and environmental damage that it did last time.