Soo.. what proportion of Boots retail staff claim benefits and use the NHS?

[vinegarandbrownpaper]

Sick of 'business leaders' with businesses propped up by tax breaks, working tax credits and people propping up contracts with benefits when there is no work.. making sure those workers can still come back despite zero hours. Pay your staff properly before you complain about a supportive society you dolt.

AllThePrettySeahorses .... how was the economy Labour left in 2010, refusing (or too frightened) to budget for a £157 billion deficit 2-3 years after the crash despite being in government and running the books for over a decade before, telling us they'd cut less, tax more than their raising of National Insurance - more balanced than it is now? Go on, gisalarf.

P.S. Here is a basic clue; from 1997 to 2010, Public Sector employment grew around 18%, the Private Sector 100% taxpayer supporting it, grew 7%.

When you've increased quangos and costing an extra £170 bil (rumour has it, could have been better spent), created an army of 'non jobs' in local authorities and increasing Council Tax 110% to fund it, saw manufacturing plummet before the crash started, bringing in 4 million migrants for new jobs while 16-24 year old unemployment was rocketing from the 500,000 in 2004 etc etc etc - please explain why that is SUSTAINABLE Ballsian style economic 'growf'?

Of course there was a deficit when Labour left government after a global financial crash. However, there were plenty of surplus years beforehand, more than the tories managed. And yes, keep people in public sector jobs because they pay tax too both directly on their wages and indirectly on what they spend. Keeps the economy going while ensuring essential jobs are done (see Shelter's figures that spending £1 on employing someone generates 2 1/2 times that amount for the local economy).

AllThePrettySeahorses …..oh dear, I see from your answer, you have bought into Ballsian, the SNP and French Economics, hook, line and sinker ……. and sinking, under debt because of it we were.

UK Labour government Surplus Years; I have already answered this, as I can’t think on any, so please tell me WHICH YEARS were deficit free e.g. the UK spent less than it earned and did not increase the National Debt, under Brown?

Public Sector Growth/Salaries tax paying ‘Growf’; Whereas you ARE correct that as Government Spending and Consumption are major components of GDP so if a government is running a bloated State it will increase GDP, but it is NOT sustainable and comes at a huge price now and in the future.

By your logic, whether a local authority ‘non job’ paying a £20k salary, or a red tape producing quango-crat receiving a £100k salary (a small army of which we didn’t seem to need in 1997), it is economically acceptable when IF BORROWING to maintain those jobs you argue;_

If a government/taxpayer pays a £100,000 public sector salary, and gets back £30,000 in tax, that is sustainable economic growf in which to build a balanced economy to pass on to our children?

If a government/taxpayer by definition keeps adding to the current £1 trillion UK unfunded Public Sector Final Salary liability (the UK has on top of the £1.5 trillion National debt) to be paid out of current annual spending in the decades to come, that is an acceptable liability to produce unsustainable growf now, they will have to pay for later?

All the while a Ballsian government is INCREASING red tape and taxes on businesses costing jobs and limiting their ability to pay higher salaries.

All the while the Ballsian government is INCREASING taxes the rest of the population, cutting their spending power, lowing their economic contribution to Ballsian growf AND due to the 1997 Balls/Brown private pension raid, ensured a great many less of them will have a Final Salary Pension or enough within their money purchase scheme, to retire on.
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/10698432/Final-salary-pensions-10-times-more-common-in-public-sector.html

The Labour/SNP country economic model is similar to similar sized economy France where it has failed to reduce a budget deficit around ONE THIRD of ours in terms of billions being borrowed and the 11% unemployed AND similar to pre crash Greece, an economy far smaller than ours, that is STILL refusing to balance their economy by concentrating on boosting Private Sector growth/jobs.

The Alternative to Ballsian, French and Greek growf; is fairly simple, Government should be as big as it NEEDS to be, needing less taxation to fund it, so small, medium and large BUSINESSES with less red tape increases investment/employment, and ‘the people’ keep more of their own money to boost consumption and save for their future, rather than fund some red tape producing quango-crats old age.

Also pay down the annual budget deficit asap to start paying off the National Debt, that is estimated to cost around £60 billion in annual interest coming out of annual budget by 2019/20 WITHOUT the borrowing Labour and the SNP wants to add – rather than pass our mistakes and wish to live on credit, onto our grandchildren and beyond - who will be forced suffer cuts/tax rises to finally sort out Labour’s last administrations policies, like the Greeks are now.

Do you see the difference NOW between Ballsian unsustainable economic ‘growf’ and the Conservative led coalitions more sustainable economic growth model?

I have read and understood your posts but I fundamentally disagree with your ideology. And I completely disagree with your purported "Conservative led coalitions more sustainable economic growth model." The coalition has spent most of its term in recession (remember that triple/quadruple dip that Gidiot is on record as denying ever happened?) with borrowing sky high while the debt and deficit grew and grew. Add to this falling wages and rampant unemployment/underemployment and you can see why I disagree that the tories have the ability to manage the economy. Any recent "growth" is from one-off boosts; for example, people holding back their tax returns to benefit from the reduced top rate (which had a detrimental effect on previous tax income), the ill-advised sales of Royal Mail and Eurostar, among other stunts. Before the global crash, there was a surplus which would have carried on to the 2010 election. In 1997, Labour inherited an unnecessary, inexcusable deficit (or a mess, as the current shower would have it) form the tories. So who is unable to manage the economy?

Oh yeah, and pmsl at "All the while a Ballsian government is INCREASING red tape and taxes on businesses costing jobs and limiting their ability to pay higher salaries" because that's what stops all these lovely businesses paying living wages, is it? Do you really think that they generally care about pay increases for their staff as opposed to eg better stakeholder returns?

Waiting for isitmebut to explain their problem with quangos. I hear the complaints about them but not an actual logical argument against.

Quangos are just one way in which government chooses to deliver particular legislative requirements. Yes they can and do abolish quangos but they still need to retain the functions, so spending doesn't decrease....

Iggly ... re UK government quangos, I explain the financial reasons in todays post above timed at 10:16, but I do not mind highlighting the problem again, as you are not alone in deluding yourself that that the spending math produces sustainable GDP growf; hell Gordon Brown was so impressed with what he ‘created’he pronounced ‘the end of boom and bust’ on the back of it, right before we had the biggest housing price boom and economic bust in many decades.

When a socialist government while talking about inequality and taxing fat cats in the Private Sector, then CREATES a fat cat job that did not exist before in the Public Sector - and it really wouldn’t matter a cows fanny if that job disappears as quickly – by definition, taxpayers money that COULD be spent on say social projects, is being frittered away by fat inefficient government.

A Quangocrat 100% being funded by the taxpayer and earning £100,000, who then pays say £30,000 in tax = a £70,000 tax shortfall, plus a Final Salary Pension liability - that could be spent sooooo much more wisely - on the NHS front line if from that budget, new homes or care facilities, or totally alien to a Labour government, keeping taxes from rising to real wealth and job creating businesses and the citizen masses.

Statement and figures from 2007/8 by the Taxpayers Alliance.

^“Government in the UK is now so large, diverse and complex that it is impossible for anyone to manage effectively, let alone by Ministers with no prior experience of management and little in-depth understanding of the work carried out by their departments. Government today tries to do too much, and consequently fails; the structure of government needs to change if we hope to see better value and significant improvements in our public services.

”When the total number of quangos is added to the other government subsidiaries such as local authorities and NHS trusts, the total number of organisations controlled by the UK Government rises to 2,063, costing the taxpayer £257 billion and employing over 5.1 million people, of which 700,000 are bureaucrats.”

The 2010 annual budget deficit/overspend Labour passes to the Coalition, was heavily influence by both Labour’s ideological inability to fathom that fat government needs to be trimmed when those Private Sector businesses and jobs go boobs up, even in the biggest recession in over 80-years and the UK unemployment rate rising.

And the influence of the Public Sector trade unions over Labour’s leader and MPs in EVER cutting workers numbers no matter what stuff hits the fan, which goes without saying, doesn’t it?

Oh … and as to “the legislative requirements” under a Labour nanny, controlling State, one can see where their focus was as nearly every government department from defence to housing was to be handed over with problems to the Coalition in 2010 – and this was after 9-years, I think the final total was closer to 4,300.

Aug 2006; Blair's 'frenzied law making':a new offence for every day spent in office
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blairs-frenzied-law-making--a-new-offence-for-every-day-spent-in-office-412072.html

“Tony Blair's government has created more than 3,000 new criminal offences during its nine-year tenure, one for almost every day it has been in power.”

”The astonishing tally brought accusations last night of a "frenzied approach to law-making" that contrasts with falling detection rates and climbing levels of violent crime.”

”The 3,000-plus offences have been driven on to the statute book by an administration that has faced repeated charges of meddling in the everyday lives of citizens, from restricting freedom of speech to planning to issue identity cards to all adults.”

But you haven't answered my point that quangos are just one way of delivering government policy. If they don't use quangos they'll use something else and those doing the job will still need paying....

So your issue about them doesn't really make sense.

Expensive tax sapping quangos ARE a way to issue restrictive business red tape AND legislation to a nanny government who wants to micro manage everything to an economic standstill - on that we are agreed.

if you don't see the problem with making more laws in 13-years than the combined total of every administration for the previous century, you are a true, loyal, card carrying apparatchik that unfortunately doesn't have the imagination to work out the money might, just might, be better spent - say, on homeless poor people?

'A law a day', no wonder there were no 'kin police on the streets under Labour, they no doubt needed to attend a weekly seminar to tell them to 'look out' for criminals breaking the latest seven crimes, no doubt delivered by a new quango. Marvellous.

Making a load of laws does not automatically equate to quangos. Do you know much about how government works?

Given that the Tories are the biggest micro managers out there (Gove writing the national curriculum, ids setting targets for job centre offices etc etc), I don't think they can really claim to be for the small state.

Only a good Tory Government next time will keep the country out of even more mess. Obviously some mumsnetters support Labour and some the Tories but Labour policies will be disastrous for Britain as many mothers know.

AllThePretty Seahorse …. As you are factually incorrect on virtually everything you have said, let me take what you have said in different parts and reply;

Labour’s economic model versus the Conservatives regarding sustainability.

So what you are saying, is that a Labour government that significantly grows itself in cost and employees, weighted heavily to administrators/bureaucrats, that;

• Negatively impacts the budget/salaries of the ‘front line’ i.e. nurses, social carers, fire and police services.

• Influences the public sector average salaries resulted in them growing higher than the private sector prior to, and into the recession, supporting those salaries, and Final Salary Pension liabilities to be paid out in future years.

• Increases via red tape and taxation to FUND the fat inefficient State, the costs of small, medium and large sized businesses of DOING business, dramatically in times of recessions, causing them to lay off staff – while government quangocrats have job security, rarely judged on performance.

• Increases taxes on every working citizen reducing their spending power and savings that would also help them through the recessions.

Reduces the opportunity of a government with a huge budget deficit to EASE taxes in order to get the country through the recession and recover beyond.

• Reduces the opportunity of a government to invest in infrastructure, homes and ways of reducing inequality from the bottom up, rather than focusing energy, hate and envy on those upper and middle earners PAYING the taxes to support all public services, including this new class of bureaucrat, akin to some dodgy post Soviet era communist state.

And you seriously think all the above is fair, never mind economically SUSTAINABLE, especially when a government is borrowing heavily to fund it?

The Conservative way is completely opposite, looking to help/grow the Private Sector;

Where instead of engineering public sector ‘growf’ paying £100k of taxpayers money to get £30k back (a net cost of £70k), a company pays £100k the taxman gets £30k, which is net £30k contribution to fund front line and public services – and although both increase GDP, the latter is more sustainable.

Please tell me where I am going wrong?

More …..

AllThePrettySeahorses ……. Part 2.

The Economy

Taking your earlier quotes one by one.

” The coalition has spent most of its term in recession (remember that triple/quadruple dip that Gidiot is on record as denying ever happened?)”

Are you aware that technically a recession is two negative quarters of GDP, so technically two GDP figures of MINUS 0.1%, is a recession? Well please look it up, the UK had one recession, it lasted from the 2nd qtr of 2008 to the 3rd qtr of 2009, UNDER LABOUR, and GDP output FELL around 7.0%, not 0.7%, a honking great 7.0%.

The UK, similar to France now did ‘flatline’ close to a recession for a few years, as Osborne was swapping Labour’s unsustainable public sector GDP growf for a coalition policy revitalized private sector growth economy – but as a high tax, fat government France shows now, Labour’s ‘lets wait for something to turn up’, was doomed to failure due to their obviously (to anyone with half an economic brain) flawed economic model.

”with borrowing sky high while the debt and deficit grew and grew.”

Why wouldn’t this happen under the Coalition, when Labour passed them an unbalanced economy full of public sector fixed costs, a £157 bil annual overspend and the accumulating National Debt already at £1.1 trillion?

For this trend to be broken, the Coalition would have had to cut an annual £157 billion from DAY 1, which far from being practical, the Labour government having sat in Westminster hoping the problems would go away, had no budget plans in place to REDUCE the overspend – yet pathetically opposed ever cut to their £157 billion overspend, blaming the coalition for cutting spending for cheap political points.

”Add to this falling wages and rampant unemployment/underemployment”

Wages in real terms, for those still in a job thanks to Labour’s deeper recession than elsewhere, was falling from 2008, the biggest drop from 2009 to 2011, who’s only ‘help’ was to take away the 10p tax rate and put up National Insurance to workers and companies, in effect, ‘a tax on jobs’.
www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/30/british-wage-slump-post-financial-crisis-uk

‘Rampant unemployment’ has seen over 2.7 million new private sector jobs since 2010 and far fewer fat government public sector jobs = a rebalancing of the economy to a more sustainable basis, that pathetic Labour would like the public to believe are all zero hours or minimum wage, despite the FACTS to the contrary.

” Before the global crash, there was a surplus which would have carried on to the 2010 election”

I will ask you AGAIN, in which year(s) did Labour/Brown have an annual surplus (paying down our national debt) and better preparing a lop-sided fat government UK economy through the ”global” crash???

”In 1997, Labour inherited an unnecessary, inexcusable deficit”

Recessions, as you clearly fail to understand, are not over coz we want them to be, especially if businesses/manufacturing closes down, they take time and policies to correct, especially if our main trading partners are also in recession as they were from the early 1990’s recession – so when tax receipts are falling, the government ‘automatic stabalisers’ kick in – increasing the annual budget deficit. Dah.
www.economicshelp.org/blog/glossary/automatic-stabilisers/

Labour inherited a 1997 balanced economy, with the annual budget deficit BUDGETED through tight spending, to go into SURPLUS early in the 2000’s, as it did – just in time for Brown to go on a spending splurge to wreck all the good work done, just as Miliband will in 2015. And it takes something ‘special’ for a Labour Party, administration after administration, to wreck an economy so consistently.

When WAS the last time Labour pass back to the Conservatives a better economy than the one they inherited for the Conservatives??

Answer that and any of the above with qualified facts, rather than false Labour election soundbites of blame we hear every day by their MPs and apologists, please.

More …..

I have never voted anything but Labour but I do agree the Labour Party have presided over a welfare state that does not work on the basis of need but on entitlement.

I am all for a welfare state and great public services, Education and the NHS. However, I can't justify wealthy people getting child allowance, tax breaks for children, wealthy pensioners getting fuel allowance, bus passes etc. We should support people in need to a basic level, not to a level that makes a welfare state unaffordable.

The disgrace is the privatisation of what were our flagship public services - NHS, social care and education. They should not be run for profits. If a council allocates an amount of its budget for adult social care, that is where that money should go-on the provision of high quality care and good staff- not on linng the pockets of private companies who provide shoddy services and pay their staff peanuts.

I also think tax evasion and the perks given to big business and finance are disgraceful.

Lulu, that is the issue. Some EU states have fairly good benefits but you pay a lot in ()60% tax levels) and in return when times are hard you take out what you pay in. It is what Beveridge set up the national insurance scheme for. If you work hard and pay in then when times are hard it pays out. That is still how the state pension works. 35 years NI contributions and in return £140 a week once you are 67 years or whatever your retirement age is for life.

The other type of scheme is where you do not pay as much in at all and most people never use or need it and it is a basic welfare safety net you can benefit from in case of need and even if you've never worked a day in your life.

We have a bit of a mixture in the UK and it is hard for most of us to know which is best. The first is probably most wise but if you only have the first then people who choose never to work who have children starve so instead we have a bit of each in the UK and it's very expensive to have a bit of each.

LuluJakey1 …… I agree with some of your points, but may I put a different perspective on them?

State entitlements to the wealthy; unfortunately this becomes an ideological bat to use to score political points, rather than a practical one, as stay with me for a minute, apart from practical problems, ‘wealth’ is relative. Maybe not so much for pensioners who have largely fixed their incomes and outgoings e.g. no mortgage, but just taking us back in another life time with 3 children, and YES we did have a v good income, but take away the fixed costs e.g. that mortgage, we had fewer holidays than most, did not send out children to private school etc – but we still relied on that money for clothes/uniforms for the children.

Before I get 10 posts saying I was shit at budgeting, or should have lived in a different home, I now put to you the practical reason why these payments are not so contentious, unless using the ideological bat for points – and something to think about in terms of NET £££ savings.

*It is the governmental cost of constantly means testing the UK, writing to people, processing the answers and managing the appeals, all the way up to legal actions – which is no problem to politicians that PROMOTE fat government, as to them what is another huge administration department, with job ‘creation’, nice secure salaries and final salary pensions sprayed around the 4 corners of our kingdom – its sustainable regional and economic ‘growf’, right? Nah.

Public Services run for profit; believe it or not, few Conservatives WANT the private sector involved, and let me remind you, of the near 6% of contracts currently ‘enjoyed’ by private companies, nearly 5% were awarded by Labour – but on the premise that varying degrees of government £££ waste will always be with us, sometimes it makes sense to allow the private sector to compete on cost grounds, allowing taxpayer money saved to be spent on the taxpayers providing it.

To me, with the firm knowledge that not every manager in the Public Sector runs a tight, efficient, ship, I find it rather telling that the private sector, always run on a tighter financial rein, can not only WIN a contract in competition with those currently running services, they make a worthwhile profit on it as well.

So surely the BEST RESULT for the user/taxpayer, is if the COSTING of the State services is run with the same efficiency as the private sector e.g. far less honking bureaucrats as mentioned further above, both bringing down costs and releasing more money for front line services/salaries?*

If the State was as big and run efficiently as it needed to be, the private sector would not be needed, and this would not be an ideological chestnut at EVERY election to a party with nothing better to say, that MAKES the State more inefficient on their watch; its their electoral gift to themselves, that keeps on giving.

Especially as for some politicians, it is far easier to attack the private sector, than put efficiency drives to public sector trade unions, right?

So if the counter argument is, 'as its the public sector it should not have to compete', that is a debatable taxpayer 'value for money' issue to be had in times of budget surpluses and bees pyjamas services, not when all services are 'creaking' and we still have a £90 bil annual government overspend. IMO

You didn't reply to my last question....

And how do you know that the private sector is more efficient, beyond saying "it must be"? There's no proof. It is all hearsay.

Yes there are inefficient parts of the public sector but also some very efficient parts. You don't hear about those so much.

The private sector doesn't get subject to efficiency reviews etc so we have no clue... All just guess work!

Hiya Iggly …. Believe me, I have explained it, but either I have used too many words to explain it (has been known lol), or you could be an economic sandwich short of a picnic, so let me give you the benefit of the doubt, using the link equivalent of drawing you pictures.

When a government ‘creates’ jobs/growth, via the taxpayers cheque book, with government employees and departments we really didn’t seem to need before the general election in 1997.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1214001/The-cost-quango-Britain-hits-170bn--seven-fold-rise-Labour-came-power.html

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1358144/Labours-3m-town-hall-jobs-bonanza-employed-deliver-frontline-services.html

At the same time, within the first several years of Labour putting extra pension costs, and red tape costs of around £15 billion, on top of tax rises extra costs on businesses, as a strong Pound was also badly affecting our exporters.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-389284/The-80-tax-rises-Labour.html

By year seven, those increased costs of doing business, supporting the ever enlarging government quango and non job employment State, saw a huge decline in manufacturing tax paying jobs during a global consumer boom, unbalancing a UK economy now relying on the City’s profits and tax receipts from bank & consumer lending-debt-speculation - to get worse after the crash, as tax receipts fell away, more manufacturing closed.
www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/million-factory-jobs-lost-under-labour-6150418.html

Small and Medium sized businesses seeing their fixed costs rising, losing confidence, finally struggling and pare back investment, then they and Large businesses have to let go employees as a final crash morphs into an economic crash, the tax sucking State keeps getting bigger to compensate for those job losses = £157 billion annual budget overspend by 2010, in cash terms the largest in the whole of Europe.

In conclusion; new layers of government public service departmental costs from 1997, that CANNOT be denied and CAN be estimated, could not happen in any private business as they would have the choice of ‘cutting their cloth’ to their income, or going bust, as many did, as seen in high streets across the country.

And rather than cut the cost of new government and LOWER taxes for businesses/citizens to redress the Labour imbalance they created, Labour up to May 2010 chose the fat State, and clearly STILL don’t realise what they did wrong.

You are using the Daily Mail to support your arguement! It is full of right-wing, inaccurate, biased twaddle. It hates everyone who is not a middle- class, middle- aged, straight, white, christian, animal- loving male.

Sorry, add to that he also needs to be anti-drugs, anti- smoking and a home-owner, preferably living in the south-east or round the cotswolds.

And a member of the Conservative party.

Sorry but the government performs a different function to the private sector in many respects. That doesn't prove that the private sector is inherently more efficient.

Please prove it beyond saying "it must be".

Also you didn't really answer my point about quangos upthread.

Please do shove your sandwich insults.

LuluJakey1 & Iggly ..... I repeat, Labour and their apologists, "still don't realise what they did wrong"

I do find it sad, nay pathetic, that the facts of whole 1997 to 2010 named new departments/quangos, increased budgets, new job descriptions, non job descriptions to specific local authorities etc etc etc are ALL A MATTER OF RECORD, but because they appear in the Daily Mail, they don't exist. How lame.

Here is a few NHS examples, where money does not get to the front line and why public sector trade unions shit themselves at the thought of having to compete with the efficiency of the private sector, to give the tax payer a value for for money service;

May 2007; “Blair's legacy:Health”
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4555344.stm

“No government has ever invested more in the health service than Labour under Blair and yet the NHS is mired in deficits with patients taking to the streets to prevent the closure of their local hospitals.”

“Joyce Robins, of Patient Concern, said: "I feel sorry for Blair, but the money has been wasted."

“This seems to be the crux of the issue. The public was promised record amounts of money would flow into the NHS. And so it has.”

“But the problem is it has not necessarily gone where many would expect.”

“Once pay hikes - consultants and GPs have both received lucrative increases - covering for deficits and rising drug costs are taken into account, the 7% budget increases actually equate to about 2% for services, according to the King's Fund.”

March 2010; ”Rise in NHS managers outstrips doctors and nurses”
www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7520408/Rise-in-NHS-managers-outstrips-doctors-and-nurses.html

“The number of managers in the NHS has risen at double the rate of doctors and nurses under Labour, official figures have disclosed.”

‘The Institute of Health Care Managers listed 1,700 separate job categories in 1995. By 2002 this had grown to 5,529 : Jenkins, Thatcher and Sons, p. 289. Figure for internal market from Leys, ‘Reducing Social Democracy’s Last Redoubt’