AIBU to think the Goverment is

[Blackness]

Bang out of order to be planning on changing the law on redundancy packages and striking rules, just so they can force through their new cuts.

Labour tried to do it the right way, by getting the Unions to agree, and they didn't. So the Conservaties think Fuck you we will simply do it the underhanded way.

Just like reducing the tax credits to £23k a year despite telling us 40k.

regret my Tory vote now....

Democracy...... What Democracy Mr Cameroon. Goverment loses in court, so you change the law instead.

You Sir quite frankly Stink!

nymphadora "I get 2 m full pay for sick then 2 m half pay. High levels of stress mean most people use that each year and we get no cover so the rest of the staff get stressed & go sick."

Have I misread this? Does that really say that most people in her public sector department take 2 months' sick leave a year!?

I do think that there is a high sickness levels within some areas of the public sector, but have no evidence to support that. However, I don't think it is as a result of generous sickness benefits per se, rather the culture within some departments and it does need to be addressed where it is a problem.

My employers provided full pay for the first six months of sickness and PHI of 75% of salary thereafter. We didn't have high levels of sickness though, so the two are not necessarily linked.

Where is this Private V public battle field coming from?

How many of us don't benefit somewhat from both?

I can't find work becuase it wouold be in the public sector (I would go private but caring responsibilities don't seem to match anything).

DH lost his job in the private.

Cuts in social services, DLA, edcuation budget all going to hammer us aprticulalry ahrd. HB if our income drops any more too.

Polarised mindsets are barmy; unless you educate your kids on mars with teachers trained there and using exclusively Martian healthcare / ecuation for their own (kids? spawn? what do martians have?) then you are not immune from public service cuts.

If you ever hire in tradesmen- bad luck, the colleges are limiting intake. If you rely on CM or nurseries, hope the redundancy rate in your area isn't so high they cut their losses. if your child has someone in their class with SN hope their TA doesn't get pulled and it all falls upon the teacher.

Surely we should be recognising how much we rely on each other and try to get each other through this, rather than hammering the opposing corner?

huge sickness rates in DH's (private, recognisable name) last employer; partly due to erratic shifts which medical agencies acknowledge make you mroe vulnerable, but also general stress: DH satrted formualting pland to get out when he lost two bosses in a year to sudden heart attacks at theer desks.

This sin;t quite how we planned it of course but at elast we had plans to move forwards.

My DH has much better sick benefits than me...8 days sick in a rolling year and escalation begins...

quite right, sancti. All this battle between public and private sector is just a government tactic to distract us from the real villains. Keep us squabbling amongst ourselves instead of challenging those in power to make sure the vulnerable are protected and the rest of us share the pain, each according to our means.

SanctiMoanyArse Sorry for not replying earlier, I have been busy all afternoon.

I of course agree that public sector employees can catalyse the generation of taxes.

Often, the extra taxes which ensue pay for the salary and upkeep of the public sector employee and/or organisation many times over - as I suspect was true in your case in the VAT office.

But my point remains. Though public sector employees can facilitate the generation of taxes by others, they do not themselves generate tax via their income.

You could argue that is an academic distinction - and to some extent, I agree.
And of course the public and private sectors are interwoven in complex ways.

In general, though, the private sector is almost entirely productive in terms of revenue generation, and the public sector is almost all consumptive.

edam, that is quite a conspiracy theory. who are the real villains then?

LFA, your theory is also very questionable. NHS help get or keep people healthy, giving them more economic value and generating tax. Schools prepare students to work. Planning departments can help encourage development, creating jobs, etc.

Can you explain your point better?

I agree that this daft private/public battle is pointless other than providing an easy and very unimaginative scapegoat for the tories.

Purits- bit of an exaggeration but not far off. Massive geographic area, child protection, small teams running at 80% = staff stress levelstgriugh the roof. Once one or two go off the rest of the team is under massive pressure. When I'm on mat leave there is no cover for the year so my team pick up the slack. I've just spent a year with 2 SW vacancies being covered by a part timer because they aren't allowed to fill the posts. We are expected to run at 90% staff maximum with major deadlines & traumatic events to deal with. People can't cope with it long term.
Oh & we've been asked to cut our budget by 40% with more families than ever needing some form of help.

goodnightmoon

The public sector can catalyse the generation of taxes by the private sector. For example, teaching children might lead to a child creating a business inventing new products.

But their actual salary does not generate income tax.

I still do not understand what you are getting at. Do you mean because the government pays the salary, the return of part of it in tax is meaningless? The tax paid still goes in the public purse, and the work meets a need of the society that has to be met one way or another.

And what about their spending, which in turns creates demand, leading to private sector goods and services provided?

I think fingernail's highly questionable point is that if a job does not directly generate money then it should not be as highly regarded a job that does.

Sanctimoanyarse excellent post earlier this evening.

This consumption/production argument is completely spurious:

So in my private sector job I drive to work on a road built by the public sector... consuming away I was, very glad the taxes had paid for and constructed it. While dd1 sat in her state school... of course we're all interdependent.

pointydog

I didn't say a job which didn't generate tax shouldn't be highly regarded.

Merely that having too many compared to tax generating jobs is unsustainable.

I agree that certain tax "catalysing" jobs in the public sector pay for themselves (or even turn a "profit" overall) - but these are relatively rare.

goodnightmoon The calculation is quite simple. Say someone earns £25k and pays about £5k in income tax/national insurance.

If they work in the private sector, then their net contribution to the exchequer is £5k.

If they work in the public sector, then their net cost to the exchequer is £20k.

Of course, in both cases this disregards the economic impact of their actual work...

Of course teachers and doctors perform incredibly useful social functions.

My point was purely about affordability. You can't have a country where everyone is a teacher, doctor, council worker, or civil servant - because then there would be no income tax generated. The public sector is only affordable with a big enough private sector funding it.

There isn't a finite amount of money in the world!

That's the whole point of growth. The global economy isn't a zero-sum game!

The private sector generates money partly FROM the public sector. Look at all those construction companies that will be in trouble now Gove is canning Building Schools for the Future. Culling the quangos hits all the private sector contractors and suppliers. It flows right down to the newsagent or sandwich bar that will lose business when people are sacked in the local job centre or tax offices or council.

I can't really work out why anyone public or private sector needs 12 or 15 months of redundancy to carry them over to their next job. If I was made redundant, I would get one month of redundancy.

Edam- completely correct, but that money came from the private sector in the first place in the form of taxes so if you like it's just being recycled via the public sector. The public sector is, at the end of the day, just a cost centre (albeit a necessary one on many levels).